The famous passage is from Politics, Book I, around 1253b–1254a.
A common translation is:
“If every instrument could accomplish its own work, obeying or anticipating the will of others… if the shuttle wove and the plectrum touched the lyre without a hand to guide them, chief workmen would not want servants, nor masters slaves.”
Another version phrases it:
“If tools could perform their tasks by themselves… there would be no need either of apprentices for the masters or of slaves for the lords.”
It’s remarkable because Aristotle is essentially imagining automation thousands of years before industrial machines or AI existed.
He’s describing:
- self-operating tools
- autonomous production
- labor replaced by technology
—which is why people often reference this passage in discussions about robotics, AI agents, and post-labor civilization.
The original Greek context was unfortunately tied to justifying slavery as economically necessary in his society. But ironically, the quote also contains the seed of a world where slavery becomes unnecessary because tools themselves perform labor.