Originally Posted by
Graham Breeze
Which prompts me to recall an exchange in The Magnificent Ambersons - a wonderful book by Booth Tarkington and a masterful film directed and scripted by Orson Welles - at a dinner between two characters George, and Eugene who builds early automobiles.
GEORGE: I said automobiles were a nuisance. They’ll never amount to anything but a nuisance. They had no business to be invented.
EUGENE (laughing): I’m not sure George is wrong about automobiles. With all their speed forward they may be a step backward in civilization. It may be that they won’t add to the beauty of the world, nor to the life of men’s souls. I am not sure. But automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They’re going to alter war, and they’re going to alter peace. I think men’s minds are going to be changed in subtle ways because of automobiles. And it may be that George is right. It may be that ten or twenty years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn’t be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him that automobiles “had no business to be invented” (politely takes leave)
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What I always think is so marvellous about the speech is that, in essence, it was written in 1918.
And how do we now view the "gasoline engine"?