Best quotes about technology and innovation – the ultimate list

The list includes classic quotes by Douglas Adams, Albert Einstein, and Thomas Edison, but also lesser-known thoughts that have been coined recently.

A bit of reflection on how deeply we depend on technology is good for anyone, especially if you spend too much time in front of your laptop or smartphone.

Technology has become an undeniable force in our lives, shaping the way we work, connect, and even think. But with all its benefits, technology also raises important questions.

This list gathers some of the most thought-provoking quotes about technology. These words from visionaries, inventors, and even critics offer a glimpse into the potential and challenges technology presents.

From artificial intelligence to the impact of social media, these words will make you ponder the future and the role technology plays in shaping our lives.

I have visualized some of these quotes in the style of 1980s ads combined with patent drawings of fictional devices.

You can find the designs on posters and other products in the dedicated collections in my Zazzle and Redbubble stores. T-shirts and sweatshirts, in white and black, are available on Amazon.

The best technology quotes

The most technologically efficient machine that man has ever invented is the book.

– Northrop Frye

Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.

– Thomas Edison

Our technology forces us to live mythically.

– Marshall McLuhan

One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.

– Elbert Hubbard

Technology is just a tool. In terms of getting the kids working together and motivating them, the teacher is the most important.

– Bill Gates

It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.

– Albert Einstein

Technology is a word that describes something that doesn’t work yet.

– Douglas Adams

All this modern technology just makes people try to do everything at once.

– Bill Watterson

We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that works.

– Douglas Adams

Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.

– R. Buckminster Fuller

It’s supposed to be automatic, but actually you have to push this button.

– John Brunner

Books may look like nothing more than words on a page, but they are actually an infinitely complex imaginotransference technology that translates odd, inky squiggles into pictures inside your head.

– Jasper Fforde

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex.

– Kurt Vonnegut

Devices are not dangerous for literature. People can be dangerous for literature. People, for example, who do not read.

– László Krasznahorkai

Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.

– Aldous Huxley

The human spirit must prevail over technology.

– Albert Einstein

Old robots are becoming more human and young humans are becoming more like robots.

– Lorin Morgan-Richards

Technology… the knack of so arranging the world that we don’t have to experience it.

– Max Frisch

Technology frightens me to death. It’s designed by engineers to impress other engineers. And they always come with instruction booklets that are written by engineers for other engineers – which is why almost no technology ever works.

– John Cleese

The great myth of our times is that technology is communication.

– Libby Larsen

Technology made large populations possible; large populations now make technology indispensable.

– Joseph Wood Krutch

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

– Pablo Picasso

TV and the Internet are good because they keep stupid people from spending too much time out in public.

– Douglas Coupland

This is the whole point of technology. It creates an appetite for immortality on the one hand. It threatens universal extinction on the other. Technology is lust removed from nature.

– Don DeLillo

The greatest achievement of humanity is not its works of art, science, or technology, but the recognition of its own dysfunction.

– Eckhart Tolle

We now expect more from technology and less from each other.

– Sherry Turkle

First we thought the PC was a calculator. Then we found out how to turn numbers into letters with ASCII – and we thought it was a typewriter. Then we discovered graphics, and we thought it was a television. With the World Wide Web, we’ve realized it’s a brochure.

– Douglas Adams

Communications tools don’t get socially interesting until they get technologically boring.

– Clay Shirky

Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.

– Laurie Anderson

Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.

– Sir Arthur C. Clarke

Ethics change with technology.

– Larry Niven

So much technology, so little talent.

– Vernor Vinge

The role of the artist today is to defend feeling against the machine.

– Marty Rubin

Programs must be written for people to read, and only incidentally for machines to execute.

– Harold Abelson

Technology is dominated by two types of people: those who understand what they do not manage and those who manage what they do not understand.

– Archibald Putt

For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press three.

– Alice Kahn

As a technology, the book is like a hammer. That is to say, it is perfect: a tool ideally suited to its task. Hammers can be tweaked and varied but will never go obsolete. Even when builders pound nails by the thousand with pneumatic nail guns, every household needs a hammer.

– James Gleick

The ultimate promise of technology is to make us master of a world that we command by the push of a button.

– Volker Grassmuck

The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.

– Sydney J. Harris

I might love my e-reader, but I’d never pass up the chance to browse real books.

– Nichole Chase

Once a new technology rolls over you, if you’re not part of the steamroller, you’re part of the road.

– Stewart Brand

Hardware: the parts of a computer that can be kicked.

– Jeff Pesis

Technology presumes there’s just one right way to do things and there never is.

– Robert M. Pirsig

Getting information off the Internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.

– Mitchell Kapor

If we continue to develop our technology without wisdom or prudence, our servant may prove to be our executioner.

– Omar N. Bradley

Technology has to be invented or adopted.

– Jared Diamond

We don’t need nukes. We have the internet.

– Alice Minium

Technology… is a queer thing. It brings you great gifts with one hand, and it stabs you in the back with the other.

– Carrie Snow

Computers are like bikinis. They save people a lot of guesswork.

– Sam Ewing

The art challenges the technology, and the technology inspires the art.

– John Lasseter

Computers are heaven-sent when they work and hell-spawn when they don’t.

– Dani Harper

All of our technology is completely unnecessary to a happy life.

– Tom Hodgkinson

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.

– Christian Lous Lange

Technology is anything that wasn’t around when you were born.

– Alan Kay

Science and technology revolutionize our lives, but memory, tradition and myth frame our response.

– Arthur M. Schlesinger

This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.

– Cory Doctorow

Technology is nothing. What’s important is that you have a faith in people, that they’re basically good and smart, and if you give them tools, they’ll do wonderful things with them.

– Steve Jobs

Please, no matter how we advance technologically, please don’t abandon the book. There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

– Patti Smith

The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.

– B.F. Skinner

Leaving society to algorithms will be like leaving healthcare to stethoscopes.

– Abhijit Naskar

Technology is teaching us to be human again.

– Simon Mainwaring

Books don’t need batteries.

– Nadine Gordimer

• • •

Keep exploring. Here are other lists and tips for geeks: