Mutual repect implies discretion and reserve even in love itself; it means preserving as much liberty as possible to those whose l...ife we share. We must distrust our instinct of intervention, for the desire to make one's own will prevail is often disguised under the mask of solicitude.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
What makes the computer's representation special is that it can be manipulated so rapidly without direct human intervention. Once ...the program is determined and the machine set to work, the electrons fly until an answer is produced. An abacus can produce an answer mechanically by means of a person who unthinkingly slides the counters according to the rules. And yet the very fact that a human being is needed to push the counters suggests a close link between man and machine. The abacus is a tool rather than a machine, for it extends human technical capabilities while remaining intimately under human control. A machine runs more or less under its own control, with its own sense of purpose and its own inanimate source of power.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A machine is characterized by sustained, autonomous action. It is set up by human hands and then is more or less set loose from hu...man control. It is designed to come between man and nature, to affect the natural world without requiring or indeed allowing humans to come into contact with it. Such is the clock, which abstracts the measurement of time from the sun and the stars: such is the steam engine, which turns coal into power to move ships or pump water without the intervention of human muscles. A tool, unlike a machine, is not self-sufficient or autonomous in action. It requires the skill of a craftsman and, when handled with skill, permits him to reshape the world in his way.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In the life of children there are two very clear-cut phases, before and after puberty. Before puberty the child's personality has ...not yet formed and it is easier to guide its life and make it acquire specific habits of order, discipline, and work: after puberty the personality develops impetuously and all extraneous intervention becomes odious, tyrannical, insufferable. Now it so happens that parents feel the responsibility towards their children precisely during this second period, when it is too late: then of course the stick and violence enter the scene and yield very few results indeed. Why not instead take an interest in the child during the first period?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
All of the assumptions once made about a parent's role have been undercut by the specialists. The psychiatric specialists, the psy...chological specialists, the educational specialists, all have mystified child development. They have fostered the idea that understanding children and promoting their intellectual well-being is too complex for mothers and requires the intervention of experts.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
As a natural process, of the same character as the development of a tree from its seed, or of a fowl from its egg, evolution exclu...des creation and all other kinds of supernatural intervention.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
I was curious, I was avid to know only what I found more real than myself, that which allowed me to glimpse the thoughts of a grea...t genius, or the force or grace of nature left to its own devices, without the intervention of man.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In a sense, every tool is a machine--the hammer, the ax, and the chisel. And every machine is a tool. The real distinction is betw...een one man using a tool with his hands and producing an object that shows at every stage the direction of his will and the impression of his personality; and a machine which is producing, without the intervention of a particular man, objects of a uniformity and precision that show no individual variation and have no personal charm. The problem is to decide whether the objects of machine production can possess the essential qualities of art.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »