Most powerful tech quotes – 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 in the recent years.

A bit of reflection on how deeply we depend on technology is good for anyone, especially if you spend too much time in social media networks.

This list of the most insightful technology quotes was first published at our sister site Ebook Friendly. Some quotes are visualized to let you easier share them in social networks.

Cory Doctorow said once “This is why I loved technology: if you used it right, it could give you power and privacy.” The choice between using or not using technology. The challenge is to use it right.

The complete roundup of the best technology quotes

1

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

– Northrop Frye

2

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

– Thomas Edison

3

Our technology forces us to live mythically.

– Marshall McLuhan

4

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

– Elbert Hubbard

5

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

– Bill Gates

6

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

– Albert Einstein

7

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

– Douglas Adams

8

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

– Bill Watterson

9

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

– Douglas Adams

10

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

– R. Buckminster Fuller

11

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

– John Brunner

12

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

13

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

– Kurt Vonnegut

14

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

– László Krasznahorkai

15

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

– Aldous Huxley

16

The human spirit must prevail over technology.

– Albert Einstein

17

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

– Lorin Morgan-Richards

18

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

– Max Frisch

19

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

20

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

– Libby Larsen

21

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

– Joseph Wood Krutch

22

Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.

– Pablo Picasso

23

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

– Douglas Coupland

24

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

25

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

– Eckhart Tolle

26

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

– Sherry Turkle

27

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

28

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

– Clay Shirky

29

Technology is the campfire around which we tell our stories.

– Laurie Anderson

30

Any sufficiently advanced technology is equivalent to magic.

– Sir Arthur C. Clarke

31

Ethics change with technology.

– Larry Niven

32

So much technology, so little talent.

– Vernor Vinge

33

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

– Marty Rubin

34

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

– Harold Abelson

35

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

36

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

– Alice Kahn

37

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

38

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

– Volker Grassmuck

39

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

40

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

– Nichole Chase

41

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

– Stewart Brand

42

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

– Jeff Pesis

43

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

– Robert M. Pirsig

44

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

– B.F. Skinner

45

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

– Mitchell Kapor

46

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

– Omar N. Bradley

47

Technology has to be invented or adopted.

– Jared Diamond

48

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

– Alice Minium

49

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

50

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

– Sam Ewing

51

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

– John Lasseter

52

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

– Dani Harper

53

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

– Tom Hodgkinson

54

Technology is a useful servant but a dangerous master.

– Christian Lous Lange

55

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

– Alan Kay

56

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

– Arthur M. Schlesinger

57

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

– Cory Doctorow

58

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

59

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

60

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

– Abhijit Naskar

61

Technology is teaching us to be human again.

– Simon Mainwaring

62

Books don’t need batteries.

– Nadine Gordimer

• • •

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