34 Quotes by Matthew B. Crawford

It is a rare person who is naturally inclined to sit still for sixteen years in school, and then indefinitely at work, yet with the dismantling of high school shop programs.

Nothing is set in concrete the way it typically is when one is, for example, pouring concrete.

The sheer perversity of making a VW go fast attracts a different human type.

Psychologists have suggested that attention may be categorized by whether it is goal-driven or stimulus-driven, corresponding to whether it is in the service of one’s own will or not.

Architects face this threat, but builders don’t.

Centuries ago, the irritant was established cultural authorities that shackled the mind in “self-imposed immaturity,” as Kant said. But our emergence from immaturity seems to have stalled at an adolescent stage, like a hippie who hasn’t aged very well. The irritants that stand out now are the self-delusions that have sprouted up around a project of liberation that has gone to seed, ushering in a “culture of performance” that makes us depressed.

In what circumstances does the human element remain indispensable, and why?