The civilizing process has increased the distance between behavior and the impulse life of the animal body.

Authority is the spiritual dimension of power because it depends upon faith in a system of meaning that decrees the necessity of the hierarchical order and so provides for the unity of imperative control.

Every century or so, fundamental changes in the nature of consumption create new demand patterns that existing enterprises can't meet.

Skilled workers historically have been ambivalent toward automation, knowing that the bodies it would augment or replace were theoccasion for both their pain and their power.

Computerization brings about an essential change in the way the worker can know the world and, with it, a crisis of confidence inthe possibility of certain knowledge.

Labor came to humanity with the fall from grace and was at best a penitential sacrifice enabling purity through humiliation. Laborwas toil, distress, trouble, fatigue--an exertion both painful and compulsory. Labor was our animal condition, struggling to survive in dirt and darkness.

Activities that seem to represent choices are often inert reproductions of accepted practice.