Schenectady Quotes

Synecdoche in Schenectady
The gobble is not the turkey,
the goblet's not the wine,
unless you're a poet
whose words drizzle
from cloud nine. ~ Beryl Dov

I was clasified as a 'Science Fiction' writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I grew up mostly in Schenectady, N.Y. From an early age, building and creating things was a real passion for me. ~ Colin Angle

I left the Middle West for Schenectady because the General Electric Company offered me a more congenial, better paying job than did anyone else. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

I became a so-called science fiction writer when someone decreed that I was a science fiction writer. I did not want to be classified as one, so I wondered in what way I'd offended that I would not get credit for being a serious writer. I decided that it was because I wrote about technology, and most fine American writers know nothing about technology. I got classified as a science fiction writer simply because I wrote about Schenectady, New York. My first book, Player Piano, was about Schenectady. There are huge factories in Schenectady and nothing else. I and my associates were engineers, physicists, chemists, and mathematicians. And when I wrote about the General Electric Company and Schenectady, it seemed a fantasy of the future to critics who had never seen the place. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

At this point, I must describe an important study carried out by Clare W. Graves of Union College, Schenectady, N.Y. on deterioration of work standards. Professor Graves starts from the Maslow-McGregor assumption that work standards deteriorate when people react against workcontrol systems with boredom, inertia, cynicism... A fourteen-year study led to the conclusion that, for practical purposes, we may divide people up into seven groups, seven personality levels, ranging from totally selfpreoccupied and selfish to what Nietzsche called 'a selfrolling wheel'-a thoroughly self-determined person, absorbed in an objective task. This important study might be regarded as an expansion of Shotover's remark that our interest in the world is an overflow of our interest in ourselves - and that therefore nobody can be genuinely 'objective' until they have fully satiated the subjective cravings. What is interesting - and surprising - is that it should not only be possible to distinguish seven clear personality-ypes, but that these can be recognised by any competent industrial psychologist. When Professor Graves's theories were applied in a large manufacturing organisation - and people were slotted into their proper 'levels' - the result was a 17% increase in production and an 87% drop in grumbles.

The seven levels are labelled as follows:

(1) Autistic
(2) Animistic
(3) Awakening and fright
(4) Aggressive power seeking
(5) Sociocentric
(6) Ag ~ Colin Wilson

The nicest veterans in Schenectady, I thought, the kindest and funniest ones, the ones who hated war the most, were the ones who'd really fought. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Disruption is in my genes. My father owned one of the first discount toy stores, Duane's Toyland, in Albany and Schenectady, near where I grew up. Discount was always a huge disruptor - it disrupted Sears Roebuck. ~ Craig Hatkoff