Western society has accepted as unquestionable a technological imperative that is quite as arbitrary as the most primitive taboo: not merely the duty to foster invention and constantly to create technological novelties, but equally the duty to surrender to these novelties unconditionally, just because they are offered, without respect to their human consequences. Lewis Mumford on change
The test of maturity, for nations as well as individuals, is not the increase of power, but in the increase of self, self, self direction, and self transcendence. For in a mature society, man himself and not his machines or his organizations is the chief work of art. Lewis Mumford on individuality