"Player Piano" Quotes
In a dystopian future, a society is disrupted by a technological revolution that renders many people obsolete.
fiction | 341 pages | Published in NaN
Quotes
The worst thing that could possibly happen to anybody would be to not be used for anything by anybody.
They were still much better off than if they'd been in a machine themselves. They could think whatever they wanted to think.
The whole world's lousy with machines and every one of them wants to do the thinking for the people and the people are in a hurry with the thinking and the people are in a hurry with their thinking because they're all afraid and they're all so glad to be able to stop sometimes and just sit and not think.
The engineers were born and raised in a world where people fought and starved and died without anybody giving a damn. This was their heritage, and they accepted it as the natural shape of things to come.
You're not a machine. You have to be someone. You have to mean something in your own right.
They were like poets, these engineers: they didn't like to talk about their poetry, but every little thing they did had the mark of the artist about it.
It's not what you do, it's what you are.
They had no freedom of choice. They were like a billiard ball. They were like a bottle in a bottling plant, and every one of them had the same job.
They were trying to make people into something they're not. We're all just people, that's all.
We're the machines, not the machines.
