Tom Robbins

The brutal truth is, we're scarcely 'educating' children at all. Even if you overlook the guilt, fear, bigotry, and dangerous anti-intellectual flapdoodle being funneled into young brains by schools on the religious right, what we're doing is training kids to be cogs in the wheels of commerce.

American Author

Deborah Tannen

Communication is a continual balancing act, juggling the conflicting needs for intimacy and independence. To survive in the world, we have to act in concert with others, but to survive as ourselves, rather than simply as cogs in a wheel, we have to act alone.

American Sociologist

Georg Simmel

The individual has become a mere cog in an enormous organization of things and powers which tear from his hands all progress, spirituality, and value in order to transform them from their subjective form into the form of a purely objective life.

German Sociologist

Paddy Considine

I don't want to be disrespectful to people who are incredible at their craft, but the truth is, if I didn't get paid for it, I wouldn't act. The best-paying jobs are usually the worst films. You're a very small cog in a big machine.

English Actor

Hannah Fry

The invisible pieces of code that form the gears and cogs of the modern machine age, algorithms have given the world everything from social media feeds to search engines and satellite navigation to music recommendation systems.

English Mathematician

Craig Venter

The trouble is the field of science, medicine, universities, biotech companies - you name it - have been so splintered, layers, sub-divided, hacked that people can spend their entire career studying one tiny little cog of life.

American Scientist

Steve Gleason

If we have a purpose in life beyond being a cog in the human machine, mine is to help inspire people and that's pretty cool. I would like to motivate the world.

American Athlete

Nicholas Galitzine

I think I think we are all so unique in our own way, and I think we are all just these tiny, little cogs in this incredibly massive, wonderful universe.

Ranvir Shorey

I would like to direct. I am also happy helping other directors realise their vision. I am happy being a cog in a wheel.

Indian Actor

James Gleick

Patents have long served as a fundamental cog in the American machine, cherished in our national soul.

Cog refers to the physical gears inside machines and devices.

Physical Object

Each cog is crucial for the overall function, much like pieces of a puzzle.

Essential Role

Cog is usually used in contexts related to machinery or mechanics.

Mechanical Context

Cog can metaphorically represent an individual's role within a larger system.

Metaphor for Role

Used to express feelings of being a small, replaceable part of a big organization.

Feeling Insignificant

Though often used negatively, being a 'cog' can also imply reliability and importance.

Not Just Negative

 the analytical engine. Now, just to give you an idea of this, this is a view from above. Every one of these circles is a cog, a stack of cogs, and this thing is as big as a steam locomotive. So as I go through this talk, I want you to imagine this gigantic machine. We heard those wonderful sounds of what this thing would have sounded like.

John Graham-Cumming: The...

 functioning system until you've got every cog component back in place and bear in mind in the uk that we have completely sterilized our countryside for years and years and years putting back as much we can is so important so putting the wildcat back in there as part of that very important predator guild is so important

Rescuing the UK's Rarest...

 Everyone was expected to follow orders coming from the top. Anyone asking questions or offering feedback was unwelcome. The Soviets had created the largest army of engineers the world had ever seen, and yet most of them were mere cogs in a gigantic machine heading for doom.

Science in service to...

 out in those days that meant saying I bid you good day sir um the thing he designed was this monstrosity here the analytical engine now just to give you an idea this is this is a view from above every one of these circles is a car a stack of cogs and this thing is as big

The greatest machine...

 honour to play somebody in history that you know made a profound difference and and he definitely did I think at the beginning he wasn't totally an anti pilgrim but he was more weary for his tribe you know he wants the safety of his people see a cog we pulled the huazi

Tatanka Means: Playing...

 of the external world. So all these real life qualities that I talk about are sort of translated to a very specific technical configuration, and we were very lucky to collaborate with ETH Zurich to develop the first prototype. So you see they extracted the motion cogs

Aparna Rao: Art that...

 sat industriously carving cogs and gears out of wood. He pieced the parts together to create the complex inner working of a striking clock that would, hopefully, chime every hour. All he had to help him was a pocket watch for inspiration and his own calculations.

The exceptional life of...

 We cannot wait for somebody else to get it right. Let us remember what we are capable of; all that we have built with blood, sweat and dreams; all the cogs that keep turning;

The Story We Tell About...

 help raise awareness about this little-known species and encourage further protection efforts like the creation of the cog when a sanctuary which happened just last year

Rare Footage of...

 gears, cogs and chains, crank-handled machine writing poetry. "Well," said Alan Turing, "Was Lady Lovelace, correct? Could a computer ever be said to originate anything?

Cog

A gear or part of a machine which helps it to work.

Often appears as...

Usage tips

An unimportant person in a large or complex organization.

Often appears as...

Usage tips

Physical Object

Essential Role

Mechanical Context

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