Machines are worshipped because they are beautiful and valued because they confer power; they are hated because they are hideous and loathed because they impose slavery.
Bertrand RussellThere are infinite possibilities of error, and more cranks take up fashionable untruths than unfashionable truths.
Bertrand RussellCalculating machines do sums better than even the cleverest people… As arithmetic has grown easier, it has come to be less respected.
Bertrand RussellMan is a rational animal—so at least I have been told. … Aristotle, so far as I know, was the first man to proclaim explicitly that man is a rational animal. His reason for this view was … that some people can do sums. … It is in virtue of the intellect that man is a rational animal. The intellect is shown in various ways, but most emphatically by mastery of arithmetic. The Greek system of numerals was very bad, so that the multiplication table was quite difficult, and complicated calculations could only be made by very clever people.
Bertrand Russell