It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we are probably yet aware of. Whereas formerly, before the advent of machinery, the commonest article you could pick up had a life and warmth which gave it individual interest, now everything is turned out to such a perfection of deadness that one is driven to pick up and collect, in sheer desperation, the commonest rubbish still surviving from the earlier period. Harold Speed
About This Quote

From the publisher's preface to his book "The Art of the Machine-Made Article": "The object of this book is to prove that the machine-made article is less alive than the hand-made article, and that not only is it less alive, but also less beautiful and more tedious and monotonous. I make no apology for citing an earlier and more popular work on this subject which I greatly admire and which may be read in the Appendix. I shall not attempt to make a new argument or to refute those who maintain that life and beauty can never be found in the machine-made article. To do so would be to go beyond my purpose, which is simply to show that the machine-made article is less alive than the hand-made one."

Source: The Practice And Science Of Drawing

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More Quotes By Harold Speed
  1. It is this perfect accuracy, this lack of play, of variety, that makes the machine-made article so lifeless. Wherever there is life there is variety, and the substitution of the machine-made for the hand-made article has impoverished the world to a greater extent than we...
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