To have a definite beginning and a definite, predictable end is the mark of fabrication, which through this characteristic alone distinguishes itself from all other human activities. Labor, caught in the cyclical movement of the body's life process, has neither a beginning nor an end. Action, though it may have a definite beginning, never, as we shall see, has a predictable end. This great reliability of work is reflected in that the fabrication process, unlike action, is not irreversible: every thing produced by human hands can be destroyed by them, and no use object is so urgently needed in the life process that its maker cannot survive and afford its destruction. Homo faber is indeed a lord and master, not only because he is the master or has set himself up as the master of all nature but because he is master of himself and his doings. This is true neither of the animal laborans, which is subject to the necessity of its own life, nor of the man of action, who remains in dependence upon his fellow men. Alone with his image of the future product, homo faber is free to produce, and again facing alone the work of his hands, he is free to destroy.
Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (1958)