Death is the sound of distant thunder at a picnic.
W. H. AudenRead
One cannot walk through an assembly factory and not feel that one is in Hell.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote reflects the dehumanizing and oppressive nature of industrial work environments.
W. H. Auden's quote suggests that the experience of walking through an assembly factory is so bleak and mechanical that it evokes feelings of being in hell. It speaks to the harsh realities of industrial life, where individuals may feel reduced to mere cogs in a machine, highlighting issues of toil, alienation, and the loss of personal identity in a production-driven society.
Themes
FactoryHellDehumanizationWorkAlienation
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a discussion about labor rights and working conditions.
More from W. H. Auden
All quotes βThat the speech of self-disclosure should be translatable seems to me very odd, but I am convinced that it is. The conclusion that I draw is that the only quality which all human being without exception possess is uniqueness: any characteristic, on the other hand, which one individual can be recognized as having in common with another, like red hair or the English language, implies the existence of other individual qualities which this classification excludes.
W. H. AudenRead
Nobody knows what the cause is, though some pretend they do; it like some hidden assassin waiting to strike at you. Childless women get it, and men when they retire; it as if there had to be some outlet for their foiled creative fire.
W. H. AudenRead
History is, strictly speaking, the study of questions; the study of answers belongs to anthropology and sociology.
W. H. AudenRead
Music is the best means we have of digesting time.
W. H. AudenRead
'Healing,' Papa would tell me, 'is not a science, but the intuitive art of wooing nature.'
W. H. AudenRead
Similar quotes
In early Islam, it was an absolute tenet that the prophet was not to be worshipped. The prophet was a messenger. And one of the things that's happened in Islam is this cult of the prophet, which to my view is counter to the original tradition.
Salman RushdieRead
I do not say think as I think, but think in my way. Fear no shadows, least of all in that great spectre of personal unhappiness which binds half the world to orthodoxy.
Thomas HuxleyRead
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
Alice MunroRead
Absolute freedom of the press to discuss public questions is a foundation stone of American liberty.
Herbert HooverRead
Deep down there was understanding, not of the facts of our lives so much as of our essential natures.
May SartonRead
The depth and strength of a human character are defined by its moral reserves. People reveal themselves completely only when they are thrown out of the customary conditions of their life, for only then do they have to fall back on their reserves.
Leon TrotskyRead