The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.
Interpretation
Inanimate objects are seen as inherently challenging to human dominance.
This quote by Russell Baker suggests that everything non-living has an intrinsic quality of opposition to human intention and control. It reflects a philosophical view that inanimate objects often frustrate our attempts to dominate or utilize them, leading to a metaphorical battle between man and the material world, indicating a deeper relationship between humanity and their environment, where resistance is an inevitable outcome.
In practice
In a speech about innovation and technology, you could use this quote to emphasize the challenges faced when designing user-friendly products.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
Poor intricated soul! Riddling, perplexed, labyrinthical soul!
Freedom is not the right to do what we want, but what we ought
We have sought for firm ground and found none. _x000D_ The deeper we penetrate, the more restless becomes the universe; all is rushing about and vibrating in a wild dance.
As long as civilization is essentially one of property, of fences, of exclusiveness, it will be mocked by delusions. Our riches will leave us sick; there will be bitterness in our laughter, and our wine will burn our mouth. Only that good profits which we can taste with all doors open, and which serves all men.
As one reads history ... one is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed, but by the punishments that the good have inflicted.
Whether in chains or in laurels, liberty knows nothing but _x000D_ victories.
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