wheel-and-pinion

Updated: August 15, 2026

I say that it does not go by wheel-and-pinion "motives" self-interests, checks, balances; that there is something far other in it than the clank of spinning-jennies, and parliamentary majorities; and, on the whole, that it is not a machine at all! The old Norse Heathen had a truer motion of God's-world than these poor Machine-Sceptics: the old Heathen Norse were sincere men.

Thomas Carlyle - On Heroes and Hero Worship and the Heroic in History