Quotes Critiquing Modern Times

The great achievement of the nineteenth century was the making of machines which were the wonders of invention, skill, and patience and which were used for the production of measureless quantities of worthless make-shifts.

                                                                                                                  --William Morris                                                    
                                             

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but an improved means to an unimproved end.

Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

Living without electricity, and doing almost all daily chores by hand, one tends to remember quotes that reinforce this philosophy, like almost anything said by Henry David Thoreau or this more recent quote:

" We Believe that when you create a machine to do the work of a man, you take something away from the man".    Sojef-- Star Trek,  Insurrection, 1998.