Industrial Revolution Quotes

“1. The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe damage on the natural world. The continued development of technology will worsen the situation. It will certainly subject human beings to greater indignities and inflict greater damage on the natural world, it will probably lead to greater social disruption and psychological suffering, and it may lead to increased physical suffering even in “advanced” countries.”
― Theodore John Kaczynski, Industrial Society and Its Future

“But the sun itself, however beneficent, generally, was less kind to Coketown than hard frost, and rarely looked intently into any of its closer regions without engendering more death than life. So does the eye of Heaven itself become an evil eye, when incapable or sordid hands are interposed between it and the thing it looks upon to bless.”
― Charles Dickens, Hard Times

“Even our best endeavors turn against us. A loom that can do the work of eight men should free eight men from servitude. Instead, seven skilled men are put out of work to starve with their families, and one skilled man because the unskilled minder of the mechanical loom. What is the point of progress if it benefits the few while the many suffer?”
― Jeanette Winterson, Frankissstein: A Love Story

“The assembly of the innovation engine that propelled the Industrial Revolution becomes easier to see once we recognize how the psychology of premodern Europeans had been quietly evolving in the background for at least eight centuries. Of course, there are many economic and geographic factors that matter too, but if there’s a secret ingredient in the recipe for Europe’s collective brain, it’s the psychological package of individualism, analytic orientation, positive-sum thinking, and impersonal prosociality that had been simmering for centuries.”
― Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West Became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous

“Nations and their economies grow in large part because they increase their collective knowledge about nature and their environment, and because they are able to direct this knowledge toward productive ends. But such knowledge does not emerge as a matter of course. While most societies that ever existed were able to generate some technological progress, it typically consisted of one-off limited advances that had limited consequences, soon settled down, and the growth it generated fizzled out. In only one case did such an accumulation of knowledge become sustained and self-propelling to the point of becoming explosive and changing the material basis of human existence more thoroughly and more rapidly than anything before in the history of humans on this planet. That one instance occurred in Western Europe during and after the Industrial Revolution.”
― Joel Mokyr, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy

“The industrial model is gone. People are more than machines.”
― Richie Norton

“Humans will stop acting like robots (cashiers) vs self-checkout and work will be strategic and anything that doesn’t require repetition. Ironically, humans will become less robotic (industrial revolution turned us into robots) and we will become more artful, thoughtful and creative...because we have to...bots will do all else.”
― Richie Norton

“Industry is not the sign of advancement, equality is.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Neden Türk: The Gospel of Secularism

“I consider this is really the heart of England,’ said Clifford to Connie, as he sat there in the dim February sunshine.
‘Do you?’ she said, seating herself in her blue knitted dress, on a stump by the path.
‘I do! this is the old England, the heart of it; and I intend to keep it intact.’
‘Oh yes!’ said Connie. But, as she said it she heard the eleven-o’clock hooters at Stacks Gate colliery. Clifford was too used to the sound to notice.”
― D.H. Lawrence, Lady Chatterley’s Lover

“What it means for the most of us is that after having missed the Industrial Revolution if India misses the technological and information revolution, we should expect to be confined to dust and heap.”
― Vikram Sood, The Unending Game: A Former R&AW Chief’s Insights into Espionage

“Average is crowded. There's room at the top. Keep climbing.”
― Richie Norton, Résumés Are Dead and What to Do About It

“ChatGPT is like the Industrial Revolution. During the Industrial Revolution, many people lost their jobs but machines helped to produce things faster. Similarly, if ChatGPT is free forever, many people will lose jobs but productivity will be manifold!”
― Md. Ziaul Haque

“In the past two hundred years, human numbers grew to over seven billion, and our species began to transform the oceans, the land, and the air. Human-built roads, canals, and railways snaked across the continents, linking thousands of human-built cities with populations in the millions. Vast ships navigated the oceans, and planes ferried goods and people through the air and across the continents. Just a hundred years ago, in glowing filaments and patches, Earth started lighting up at night.”
― David Christian, Origin Story: A Big History of Everything

“Yet, with all his acuteness, it did not occur to him that Europe was not in the least to blame for his disillusionment. Europe had dropped miracles ages ago; she contented herself with ideals. It is we in Russia who will go on confusing miracles with ideals, as if the two were identical, whereas they have nothing to do with each other. As a matter of fact, just because Europe had ceased to believe in miracles, and realised that all human problems resolve down to mere arrangements here on earth, ideas and ideals had been invented. But the Russian bear crept out of his hole and strolled to Europe for the elixir of life, the flying carpet, the seven-leagued shoes, and so on, thinking in all his naïveté that railways and electricity were signs which clearly proved that the old nurse never told a lie in her fairy tales...”
― Lev Shestov, All Things are Possible

“A Schönbrunn, les fêtes se suivent et se ressemblent, indifférentes au temps qui passe, au monde qui change, aux moeurs qui évoluent. Elégantes, poudrées, chamarrées, brillant des mille éclats des diamants, des cristaux, de l’argenterie ; évoluant aux pays glissés des valses, menuets et quadrilles ; bruissant de robes de soie, cliquetant de médailles, bourdonnant d’intrigues de cour ; si charmantes, si convenables, si ennuyeuses … Pendant que l’on se pavane, selon un protocole immuable, dans les salons rococo et les jardins au cordeau, les premières locomotives à vapeur ahanent sur les premiers kilomètres de rails, d’énormes machines de fonte et d’acier remplacent des contingents d’ouvriers dans les usines, l’éclairage au gaz arrive dans les théâtres et bientôt dans les rues, on parvient à produire et stocker de l’électricité, Niepce et Daguerre impressionnent les premières plaques photographiques … Des idées nouvelles issues de la Révolution, sur la liberté, l’égalité, les droits de l’homme, s’échafaudent en systèmes et s’enracinent dans les coeurs, un esprit de révolte fermente au centre des villes, au fond des campagnes, au sein des armées, partout le poids écrasant de cette monarchie obsolète devient insupportable…

Franz sait tout cela qui, du haut de ses onze printemps, regarde pavoiser ce beau monde. Boulimique de savoir et d’informations, François lui raconte raconte toutes ses visions dès qu’ils ont l’occasion d’être seuls ; les sociétés qu’il lui décrit sont bien loin de l’atmosphère empesée de Schönbrunn, les gens dont il lui parle sont bien plus vivants que ces momies figées dans leurs convenances. Aussi le petit duc pose-t’il sur cette fête - sa fête, pourtant - le regard blasé, impatient et las de celui qui sait qu’il assiste à la lente agonie d’un système sclérosé, mais sans pouvoir y changer quoi que ce soit, ni avancer ni retarder l’échéance.”
― Jean-Marc Ligny, La Dame Blanche

“The progressive stack is basically a measure of how much you aren’t like, say, James Watt, the developer of the modern steam engine, the key invention of the Industrial Revolution. Watt was white, male, Protestant, straight, rich, mechanically skilled, and a scientific genius, so you’d better not be.”
― Steve Sailer

“Decades from now, Americans will look back at this time, when Data Science was at its infancy, and liken its societal impact to that of the Industrial and Technological Revolutions.”
― Ken Poirot

“The essence of the Industrial Revolution consists in the triumph of this principle over the medieval and mercantilist regulations. Modern economy first begins with the introduction of the principle of laissez-faire, and the idea of individual freedom first succeeds in establishing itself as the ideology of this economic liberalism. These connections do not, of course, prevent both the idea of labour and the idea of freedom from developing into independent ethical forces and from often being interpreted in a really idealistic sense. But to realize how small a part was played by idealism in the rise of economic liberalism, it is only necessary to recall that the demand for freedom of trade was directed, above all, against the skilled master, in order to take away from him the only advantage he had over 55 the mere contractor. Adam Smith himself was still far from claiming such idealistic motives for the justification of free competition; on the contrary, he saw in human selfishness and the pursuit of personal interests the best guarantee for the smooth functioning of the economic organism and the realization of the general weal. The whole optimism of the enlightenment was bound up with this belief in the selfregulating power of economic life and the automatic adjustment of conflicting interests; as soon as this began to disappear, it became more and more difficult to identify economic freedom with the interests of the general weal and to regard free competition as a universal blessing.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art Volume 3: Rococo, Classicism and Romanticism

“We must always remember that the fossil fuel era began in violent kleptocracy, with those two foundational thefts of stolen people and stolen land that kick-started a new age of seemingly endless expansion. The route to renewal runs through reckoning and repair: reckoning with our past and repairing relationships with the people who paid the steepest price of the first industrial revolution.”
― Naomi Klein, On Fire: The Case for the Green New Deal

“So long as greed drives the industries, it's not industrialization, it is vandalization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, Ingan Impossible: Handbook of Hatebusting

“To say that people weren’t aware, from the first, of the effect the Industrial Revolution was having on nature—and on themselves—is to commit a falsehood.”
― Sara Barkat, Earth Song: A Nature Poems Experience

“The story has been told innumerable times: how the expansion of markets, the presence of coal and iron as well as a humid climate favorable to the cotton industry, the multitude of people dispossessed by the new eighteenth century enclosures, the existence of free institutions, the invention of the machines, and other causes interacted in such a manner as to bring about the Industrial Revolution. It has been shown conclusively that no one single cause deserves to be lifted out of the chain and set apart as the cause of that sudden and unexpected event.”
― Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

“In accordance with my duty, I do not pursue any selfish goal. The only favor I ask is to continue to put all my personal earnings to good use in the expansion of our foreign interests. [...] What I have sought in Africa, what I shall find more and more if people follow me, that, together with the progress of civilization, is work for our industrial firms and consequently for their numerous employees.”
― Leopold II

“Humanitarian Industrialization

Fourth industrial revolution my eye! We haven't yet recovered from the disparities produced by the first, second and third industrial revolutions. Morons keep peddling cold and pompous dreams devoid of humanity, and morons keep consuming them like good little backboneless vermin. Grow a backbone already!

We always look at the glorious aspects of industrialization and overlook all those countless lives that are ruined by it. But it's okay! As long as we are not struck by a catastrophe ourselves, our sleep of moronity never breaks - so long as our comfort is unchallenged, and enhanced rather, it's okay if millions keep falling through the cracks.

So long as you can afford a smartphone that runs smooth like butter, it doesn't matter if it is produced by modern day slave labors who can't even afford the basic essentials of living. With all the revenue the tech companies earn by charging you a thousand dollar for a hundred dollar smartphone, they can't even pay decent wages to the people working their butt off to manufacture their assets - because apparently, it is more important for the people at the top to afford private jets and trips to space, than the factory workers to afford healthcare, housing and a couple of square meals a day.

And this you call industrialization - well done - you just figured out the secret to glory without being bothered by something so boring as basic humanity.

I say to you here and now, listen well - stop abusing revolutionary scientific discoveries in the making of a cold, mechanistic, disparity infested world - use science and technology to wipe out the disparities, not cause them. Break free from your modern savagery of inhuman industrialization, and focus your mind on humanitarian industrialization.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Centurion Sermon: Mental Por El Mundo

“Belgium does not owe its wealth to te exploitation of the Congo. In the 19th century, Belgium was the second-most industrialised country in the whole world. It is true that the colonisation of the Congo was undoubtedly an enterprise with an economic agenda that yielded much profits to those who took part of it, It is also undeniable that it had a favorable outcome for the Belgian economy. But it was also a "win-win" issue for all concerned, including the Congolese.”
― André de Maere d'Aertrycke

“চ্যাটজিপিটি শিল্প বিপ্লবের মতো। শিল্প বিপ্লবের সময় অনেক লোক তাদের চাকরি হারিয়েছিল কিন্তু মেশিনগুলো জিনিস দ্রুত উৎপাদন করতে সাহায্য করেছিল। একইভাবে চ্যাটজিপিটি সর্বদা ফ্রি থাকলে অনেক লোক চাকরি হারাবে কিন্তু উৎপাদনশীলতা বহুগুণ বাড়বে!”
― Md Ziaul Haque

“What has been made all but impossible by the industrial system is that men and women can attain a livelihood by doing what is both aesthetically and morally sound and economically and practically valid, by a means that allows them both intellectual and spiritual responsibility.”
― Brian Keeble, Art For Whom and For What?

“Education has always played a critical role at every stage of the industrial revolution, a role that always changed as industrial revolutions change, from the first, second, and third industrial revolutions. Now is another time for the education system to not only change but transform in response to the demands of the 4th industrial revolution before us.”
― Evalyne Kemuma

“Having perfected machinery, we are doing our best to make ourselves into machines.”
― Lewis Foreman Day, Alphabets Old and New

“The Industrial Revolution brought forth a transformation in the lives of women, as they moved from the domestic sphere to the factories, facing long hours of toil and challenging conditions. This shift not only altered their economic roles but also laid the groundwork for the questioning of established gender norms.”
― Friedrich Engels