Samuel Butler (novelist) - Erewhon (1872)

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Day by day, however, the machines are gaining ground upon us; day by day we are becoming more subservient to them; more men are daily bound down as slaves to tend them, more men are daily devoting the energies of their whole lives to the development of mechanical life. The upshot is simply a question of time, but that the time will come when the machines will hold the real supremacy over the world and its inhabitants is what no person of a truly philosophic mind can for a moment question.

Samuel Butler
It has been said that the love of money is the root of all evil. The want of money is so quite as truly.

Samuel Butler
From a worldly point of view, there is no mistake so great as that of being always right.

Samuel Butler
Let us be grateful to the mirror for revealing to us our appearances only.

Samuel Butler
Our opinion is that war to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them. Every machine of every sort should be destroyed by the well-wisher of his species. Let there be no exceptions made, no quarter shown; let us at once go back to the primeval condition of the race. If it be urged that this is impossible under the present condition of human affairs, this at once proves that the mischief is already done, that our servitude has commenced in good earnest, that we have raised a race of beings whom it is beyond our power to destroy and that we are not only enslaved but are absolutely acquiescent in our bondage.

Samuel Butler
It has been said that though God cannot alter the past, historians can; it is perhaps because they can be useful to Him in this respect that He tolerates their existence.

Samuel Butler
The wish to spread those opinions that we hold conducive to our own welfare is so deeply rooted in the English character that few of us can escape its influence.

Samuel Butler
We see but a part, and being thus unable to generalize human conduct, except very roughly, we deny that it is subject to any fixed laws at all, and ascribe much both of a man's character and actions to chance, or luck, or fortune.

Samuel Butler
I fall asleep in the full and certain hope That my slumber shall not be broken; And that, though I be all-forgetting, Yet shall I not be all-forgotten, But continue that life in the thoughts and deeds of those I have loved.

Samuel Butler
It must always be remembered that man's body is what it is through having been molded into its present shape by the chances and changes of an immense time.

Samuel Butler
It was a monotonous life, but it was very healthy; and one does not much mind anything when one is well.

Samuel Butler