„In its essence, technology is something that man does not control.“

— Martin Heidegger
„The controlling Intelligence understands its own nature, and what it does, and whereon it works.“
— Marcus Aurelius
„If you summon it by the right word, by its right name, it will come. This is the essence of magic, which does not create but summons.“
— Franz Kafka
„All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.“
— H.L. Mencken
„I've always wanted to own and control the primary technology in everything we do.“
— Steve Jobs
„Life may contain the "essence" (what else could?); recollection, the repetition in imagination, may decipher the essence and deliver to you the "elixir"; and eventually you may even be privileged to "make" something out of it, "to compound the story." But life itself is neither essence nor elixir, and if you treat as such it will only play its tricks on you.“
— Hannah Arendt
„Do the essences of proposition and of the truth determine themselves from out of the essence of the thing, or does the essence of the thing determine itself from out of the essence of the proposition? The question is posed as an either/or. However does this either/or itself suffice? Are the essence of the thing and the essence of the proposition only built as mirror images because both of them together determine themselves from out of the same but deeper lying root? However, what and where can be this common ground for the essence of the thing and of the proposition and of their origin? The unconditioned (Unbedingt)? We stated at the beginning that what conditions the essense of the thing in its thingness can no longer itself be thing and conditioned, it must be an unconditioned (Un-bedingtes). p. 47“
— Martin Heidegger