Player Piano

by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Edgar Rice Burroughs

You can’t play college football, and go to school. They tried that once, and you know what a silly mess that was.”

“What have you got against machines?” said Buck. “They’re slaves.” “Well, what the heck,” said Buck. “I mean, they aren’t people. They don’t suffer. They don’t mind working.” “No. But they compete with people.” “That’s a pretty good thing, isn’t it—considering what a sloppy job most people do of anything?” “Anybody that competes with slaves becomes a slave,” said Harrison thickly, and he left.

“It had become a white man’s world, and Indian ways in a white man’s world were irrelevant.

“And the Ghost Dance religion,” said Lasher, “was that last, desperate defense of the old values. Messiahs appeared, the way they’re always ready to appear, to preach magic that would restore the game, the old values, the old reasons for being.

“You don’t matter,” said Finnerty. “You belong to History now.”

von Neumann.

spoken highly of the good brought by great and continued material change.

But we cannot win good lives for ourselves in peacetime by the same methods we used to win battles in wartime. The problems of peace are altogether more subtle.

“I deny that there is any natural or divine law requiring that machines, efficiency, and organization should forever increase in scope, power, and complexity, in peace as in war. I see the growth of these now, rather, as the result of a dangerous lack of law.

there must be virtue in imperfection, for Man is imperfect,

And a step backward, after making a wrong turn, is a step in the right direction.”

“The sovereignty of the United States resides in the people, not in the machines, and it’s the people’s to take back, if they so wish. The machines,” said Paul, “have exceeded the personal sovereignty willingly surrendered to them by the American people for good government.