We couldn't imagine the emptiness of a creature who put a razor to her wrists and opened her veins, the emptiness and the calm.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Historical fact: People stopped being people in 1913. That was the year Henry Ford put his cars on rollers and made his workers adopt the speed of the assembly line. At first, workers rebelled. They quit in droves, unable to accustom their bodies to the new pace of the age. Since then, however, the adaptation has been passed down: we've all inherited it to some degree, so that we plug right into joy-sticks and remotes, to repetitive motions of a hundred kinds.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote reflects on how industrialization and the assembly line altered human behavior and experience.
Jeffrey Eugenides comments on a pivotal shift in human existence that began with Henry Ford's introduction of the assembly line in 1913. He suggests that this mechanization transformed people from being fully embodied beings to individuals who conform to the rhythm of machines, ultimately affecting not just workers of that era but modern society at large, leading to a cultural legacy where our interactions often mimic the repetitive motions of technology.
Themes
IndustrializationAssembly LineMechanizationAdaptationTechnology
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the impacts of technology on the workforce.
More from Jeffrey Eugenides
All quotes →It was the combination of many factors... With most people, suicide is like Russian roulette. Only one chamber has a bullet. With the Lisbon girls, the gun was loaded. A bullet for family abuse. A bullet for genetic predisposition. A bullet for historical malaise. A bullet for inevitable momentum. The other two bullets are impossible to name, but that doesn't mean the chambers were empty.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Depression is like a bruise that never goes away. A bruise in your mind. You just got to be careful not to touch it where it hurts. It's always there, though.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
It was one of those humid days when the atmosphere gets confused. Sitting on the porch, you could feel it: the air wishing it was water.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Jerome was sliding and climbing on top of me and it felt like it had the night before, like a crushing weight. So do boys and men announce their intentions. They cover you like a sarcophagus lid. And call it love.
Jeffrey EugenidesRead
Similar quotes
For time flows on, and if it did not, it would be a bad prospect for those who do not sit at golden tables. Methods become exhausted; stimuli no longer work. New problems appear and demand new methods. Reality changes; in order to represent it, modes of representation must also change. Nothing comes from nothing; the new comes from the old, but that is why it is new.
Bertolt BrechtRead
How can we effect change in the world when only half of it is invited or feel welcome to participate in the conversation?
Emma WatsonRead
If you think adventure is dangerous, try routine; it is lethal.
Paulo CoelhoRead
It is the most painful thing to see how young children become collateral damage of wars, but when peace treaties are signed landmines do not respect any of these accords. And as long as these silent killers linger after wars, children will never know peace
Danny GloverRead
Companies could step up to the plate time and time again and help out by cleaning up a groundwater system that's contaminated, being more transparent with the community when they have a problem, respecting that community, getting them out of harm's way.
Erin BrockovichRead
I believe that the rights of women and girls is the unfinished business of the 21st century.
Hillary ClintonRead