Quoted by Doron Swade in his book, The Difference Engine: Charles Babbage and the Quest to Build the First Computer, this seems pretty much universally relevant:
Propose to an Englishman any principle, or any instrument, however admirable, and you will observe that the whole effort of the English mind is directed to find a difficulty, defect, or an impossibility in it. If you speak to him of a machine for peeling a potato, he will pronounce it impossible: if you peel a potato with it before his eyes, he will declare it useless, because it will not slice a pineapple.
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