Fortunately, we can trivially verify that the quote is real and comes from a short story: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72890/pg72890-images.html#THE_MA

Fortunately, we can trivially verify that the quote is real and comes from a short story: https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72890/pg72890-images.html#THE_MACHINE_STOPS https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/72890/pg72890-images.ht... The quote in question comes from the section "Part III: The Homeless".