You cannot endow even the best machine with initiative; the jolliest steam-roller will not plant flowers.

Lippmann’s line contrasts mechanical efficiency with human initiative and creative judgment. Even an excellent “machine” (a bureaucracy, a technocratic system, or any routinized apparatus) can execute tasks, but it cannot originate purposes or cultivate living, delicate goods—symbolized by “plant[ing] flowers.” The “jolliest steam-roller” suggests that even a well-intentioned, upbeat, or smoothly functioning system tends to flatten complexity: it standardizes, compresses, and clears space rather than nurturing growth. The aphorism thus warns against confusing organization with imagination, procedure with moral choice, or power with cultivation. It implies that societies need human agency—people capable of initiative, care, and creative renewal—beyond what any impersonal mechanism can supply.