“Innumerable confusions and a profound feeling of despair invariably emerge in periods of great technological and cultural transitions. Our ‘Age of Anxiety’ is, in great part, the result of trying to do today’s job with yesterday’s tools — with yesterday’s concepts.”

“Today’s child is growing up absurd, because he lives  in two worlds, and neither of them inclines him to grow up. Growing up — that is our new work, and it is total. Mere instruction will not suffice.”

“When this circuit learns your job, what  are you going to do?” … “‘Come into my parlor,’ said the computer to the specialist.”

“Electric circuitry is recreating in us the multi-dimensional space orientation of the ‘primitive.'”

“At the high speeds of electric communication, purely visual means  of apprehending the world are  no longer  possible;  they are just too slow to be relevant or effective.”

“Professionalism is environmental. Amateurism is anti-environmental. Professionalism merges the individual into patterns of total environment. Amateurism seeks the development of the total awareness of the individual and the critical awareness of the groundrules of society. The amateur can afford to lose. The professional tends to classify and to specialize, to accept uncritically the groundrules of the environment. The groundrules provided by the mass response of his colleagues serve as the pervasive environment of which he is contentedly unaware. The ‘expert’ is the man who stays put.”

“The highest purpose  is to have no purpose at all. This puts one in accord with nature, in her manner of operation.”

“As new technologies come into play, people are less and less convinced of the importance of self-expression. Teamwork succeeds private effort.”

“Electronic circuitry is Orientalizing the West. The contained, the distinct, the separate — our Western legacy — are being replaced by the flowing, the unified, the fused.”