“Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as the railroads lead to Boston or New York. We are in a great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Either is in such a predicament as the man who was earnest to be introduced to a distinguished deaf woman, but when he was presented, and one end of her ear trumpet was put into his hand, had nothing to say.”

“If we do not get out sleepers [i.e., manufacture railroad ties], and forge rails, and devote days and nights to the work, but go to tinkering upon our lives to improve them, who will build railroads? And if the railroads are not built, how shall we get to heaven in season? But if we stay at home and mind our business, who will want railroads? We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”

“For a man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.”

—from Henry David Thoreau's Walden; emphasis added