Quotes and Sayings about Invention
"My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived."
- John Adams
(Related: Imagination, Country, Invention, Man, Office)
"As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality."
- Mose Allison
(Related: Invention, Jazz, Personality)
"Modern invention has banished the spinning wheel, and the same law of progress makes the woman of today a different woman from her grandmother."
- Susan B. Anthony
(Related: Progress, Invention, Law, Today, Woman)
"All perceiving is also thinking, all reasoning is also intuition, all observation is also invention."
- Rudolf Arnheim
(Related: Intuition, Invention, Observation, Thinking)
"If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before."
- John Ashcroft
(Related: Mother, Father, Cooperation, Invention, Necessity)
"A major one which no one can overlook is technological and based on inventions and discoveries which have altered the whole basis of production and deeply affected social relations."
- Emily Greene Balch
(Related: Inventions, Production)
"The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting."
- Dave Barry
(Related: History, Development, Communication, Internet, Invention, Waiting)
"There is not less wit nor less invention in applying rightly a thought one finds in a book, than in being the first author of that thought."
- Pierre Bayle
(Related: Thought, Being, First, Invention, Wit)
"There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought."
- Pierre Bayle
(Related: Thought, Being, First, Invention)
"I'm a geek who loves fashion. There's been a reinvention of the word geek. It means being passionate about anything that's under the radar or sort of frowned upon, like Comic-Con."
- Kristen Bell
(Related: Being, Fashion, Word)
"I'm a geek who loves fashion. There's been a reinvention of the word geek. It means being passionate about anything that's under the radar or sort of frowned upon, like Comic-Con."
- Kristen Bell
(Related: Being, Fashion, Word)
"What makes photography a strange invention is that its primary raw materials are light and time."
- John Berger
(Related: Time, Invention, Light, Photography)
"I fear this little episode does not speak very favourably for my business capacity in those early days, for I certainly ought to have made much more than I did by this really important invention."
- Henry Bessemer
(Related: Business, Fear, Invention)
"We fixed on No. 4, Queen Street Place, for our City offices, and it was from there that so many of my patented inventions were dated."
- Henry Bessemer
(Related: Inventions, Queen)
"Doubt is the father of invention."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Father, Doubt, Invention)
"Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance."
- Ambrose Bierce
(Related: Devil, Invention)
"The reinvention of daily life means marching off the edge of our maps."
- Bob Black
(Related: Life)
"We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex."
- Jimmy Carl Black
(Related: Invention, Mothers, Play, Songs)
"You own a watch the invention of the mind, though for a single motion 'tis designed, as well as that which is with greater thought with various springs, for various motions wrought."
- Richard Blackmore
(Related: Thought, Invention, Mind)
"I thought of such Christian inventions as the ghetto and the Jewish badge of shame. The Nazis didn't have to go very far to pick up their know-how."
- Lionel Blue
(Related: Thought, Christian, Inventions, Shame)
"America demands invention and innovation to succeed."
- Kit Bond
(Related: America, Innovation, Invention, Succeed)
"Man's survival, from the time of Adam and Eve until the invention of agriculture, must have been precarious because of his inability to ensure his food supply."
- Norman Borlaug
(Related: Food, Time, Survival, Agriculture, Invention, Man)
"Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement."
- Claude M. Bristol
(Related: Success, Thought, Achievement, Wealth, Gain, Inventions)
"Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure."
- Thomas Edward Brown
(Related: Giving, Invention, Literature, Open, Pleasure)
"The European Union is the world's most successful invention for advancing peace."
- John Bruton
(Related: Peace, Successful, Invention, World)
"Getting caught is the mother of invention."
- Robert Byrne
(Related: Mother, Invention)
"This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions."
- Lord Byron
(Related: Age, Intentions, Inventions, Killing)
"The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population."
- Henry Charles Carey
(Related: Food, Action, Invention, Laws, Population, Theory)
"I am still making order out of chaos by reinvention."
- John Le Carre
(Related: Chaos, Order)
"I didn't say my invention is better, nor did I say other stuff does not work."
- Alex Chiu
(Related: Work, Invention)
"None of my neighbors believe in what I say. They refuse to wear the rings. They will never accept my invention until the day they die. That's what I call the real antichrists."
- Alex Chiu
(Related: Day, Invention, Neighbors, Will)
"I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble."
- Agatha Christie
(Related: Mother, Idleness, Invention, Laziness, Necessity, Opinion, Trouble)
"A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech."
- Emile M. Cioran
(Related: Conversation, Invention, Silence, Speech)
"Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which belie the idea that things cannot be changed."
- Tom Clancy
(Related: Idea, Hope, Invention, Man)
"Opera, next to Gothic architecture, is one of the strangest inventions of Western man. It could not have been foreseen by any logical process."
- Kenneth Clark
(Related: Architecture, Inventions, Man, Opera)
"America, the temple of invention and industry, doesn't make things anymore."
- Nick Clooney
(Related: Temple, America, Invention)
"I guess there's a certain amount of poking fun at certain characters, but that's because there is something amusing about them or about the way they behave, so I guess you can say that that's poking fun at the character. But the character is your own invention, so who cares?"
- Joel Coen
(Related: Character, Fun, Invention)
"As you see, I do not treat the creation of fiction, that to say the invention and development of fantasies, as a form of abstract thought. I dont wish to deny the uses of the intellect, but sometimes one has the intuition that the intellect by itself will lead one nowhere."
- J. M. Coetzee
(Related: Thought, Development, Creation, Fiction, Intellect, Intuition, Invention, Will)
"Invention flags, his brain goes muddy, and black despair succeeds brown study."
- William Congreve
(Related: Despair, Flags, Invention, Study)
"Marriage is a wonderful invention: then again, so is a bicycle repair kit."
- Billy Connolly
(Related: Marriage)
"Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life."
- Joseph Conrad
(Related: Art, Imagination, Life, Truth, Men, Existence, Invention)
"Long lives aren't natural. We forget that senior citizens are as much an invention as toasters or penicillin."
- Doug Coupland
(Related: Forget, Invention)
"What we were in on, really, was the invention of animation."
- Marc Davis
(Related: Animation, Invention)
"But what has America to boast? What are the graces or the virtues which distinguish its inhabitants? What are their triumphs in war, or their inventions in peace?"
- Thomas Day
(Related: Peace, War, America, Inventions)
"The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere."
- Jared Diamond
(Related: Invention, Loss)
"Of all of our inventions for mass communication, pictures still speak the most universally understood language."
- Walt Disney
(Related: Communication, Inventions, Language)
"Our inventions mirror our secret wishes."
- Lawrence Durrell
(Related: Inventions, Wishes)
"One of the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the Mini."
- James Dyson
(Related: Fun, Inventions)
"I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Work, Accident, Inventions)
"One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success."
- Thomas A. Edison
(Related: Money, Success, Work, Invention, Man, Pleasure, Reward, Value, World)
"The digital revolution is far more significant than the invention of writing or even of printing."
- Douglas Engelbart
(Related: Revolution, Invention, Printing, Writing)
"Painting is not for me either decorative amusement, or the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation."
- Max Ernst
(Related: Amusement, Discovery, Invention, Painting, Reality)
"Necessity, the mother of invention."
- George Farquhar
(Related: Mother, Invention, Necessity)
"It's a non-stop invention, this game of life, and as soon as you think you've got it, you lose it."
- Tim Finn
(Related: Life, Invention)
"The invention of Bob Dylan with his guitar belongs in its way to the same kind of tradition of something meant to be heard, as the songs of Homer."
- Robert Fitzgerald
(Related: Guitar, Invention, Songs, Tradition)
"All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry."
- Gustave Flaubert
(Related: Poetry, Science, Geometry, Inventions)
"It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts."
- Lukas Foss
(Related: Inventions, Obvious)
"As the archaeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Thought, End, Invention, Man)
"As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end."
- Michel Foucault
(Related: Thought, End, Invention, Man)
"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about."
- Helen Frankenthaler
(Related: Art, Invention, Rules)
"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home."
- David Frost
(Related: Home, People, Invention, Living, Television)
"In our day the conventional element in literature is elaborately disguised by a law of copyright pretending that every work of art is an invention distinctive enough to be patented."
- Northrop Frye
(Related: Art, Work, Day, Invention, Law, Literature)
"Art is beauty, the perpetual invention of detail, the choice of words, the exquisite care of execution."
- Theophile Gautier
(Related: Art, Beauty, Care, Choice, Detail, Execution, Invention, Words)
"The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt."
- Henry George
(Related: Imagination, Invention, Mankind, March)
"What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions."
- Arnold H. Glasow
(Related: Country, Inventions, Labor, Needs)
"I've got a new invention. It's a revolving bowl for tired goldfish."
- Lefty Gomez
(Related: Invention)
"The market came with the dawn of civilization and it is not an invention of capitalism. If it leads to improving the well-being of the people there is no contradiction with socialism."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: People, Civilization, Capitalism, Contradiction, Dawn, Invention, Socialism)
"The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization."
- Mikhail Gorbachev
(Related: Civilization, Capitalism, Invention)
"Industry has operated against the artisan in favor of the idler, and also in favor of capital and against labor. Any mechanical invention whatsoever has been more harmful to humanity than a century of war."
- Remy de Gourmont
(Related: War, Humanity, Invention, Labor)
"I see architecture not as Gropius did, as a moral venture, as truth, but as invention, in the same way that poetry or music or painting is invention."
- Michael Graves
(Related: Architecture, Music, Poetry, Truth, Invention, Painting)
"Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for further development."
- Ursula K. Le Guin
(Related: Development, Hope, Inventions)
"The Internet makes it possible for people like me to live the way I do now. Without it, I'd have to be in New York or some other city. I think the Internet is the greatest invention in history after antibiotics."
- Jane Haddam
(Related: History, People, Internet, Invention, Now)
"So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it."
- Chris Hadfield
(Related: Invention, Key, Mission, Pride)
"There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god."
- John B. S. Haldane
(Related: God, Fire, Flying, Insult, Invention)
"In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate."
- Garrett Hardin
(Related: Time, Agriculture, Discovery, Invention, Logic, Property)
"Since the invention of steamships distant countries have become like those that are near at hand."
- Townsend Harris
(Related: Countries, Invention)
"There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention."
- Ernest Hemingway
(Related: Events, Invention, Obligation, Writer)
"In reading the scriptures of truth, we often put wrong constructions upon them, and apply them improperly; and I apprehend it has often been the case in relation to this portion, particularly that part in relation to man's seeking out many inventions."
- Elias Hicks
(Related: Truth, Inventions, Man, Reading, Wrong)
"How thoroughly it is ingrained in mathematical science that every real advance goes hand in hand with the invention of sharper tools and simpler methods which, at the same time, assist in understanding earlier theories and in casting aside some more complicated developments."
- David Hilbert
(Related: Science, Time, Invention, Theories, Tools, Understanding)
"Television is like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn't change people's habits. It just kept them inside the house."
- Alfred Hitchcock
(Related: Change, People, Habits, Invention, Television)
"No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination."
- Edward Hopper
(Related: Imagination, Invention)
"For thirty years, beginning with the invention of a privacy right in the Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, the Left has been waging a systematic assault on the constitutional foundation of the nation."
- David Horowitz
(Related: Decision, Beginning, Court, Invention, Nation, Privacy, Right, Years)
"We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg's great invention had been directed at printing only comic books."
- Robert M. Hutchins
(Related: Books, Invention, Light, Printing, Television)
"What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!"
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Business, Science, Society, Capitalism, Inventions)
"I'm afraid for all those who'll have the bread snatched from their mouths by these machines. What business has science and capitalism got, bringing all these new inventions into the works, before society has produced a generation educated up to using them!"
- Henrik Ibsen
(Related: Business, Science, Society, Capitalism, Inventions, Machines)
"This play is truly a great invention, and we're having a great time doing it eight times a week."
- Bill Irwin
(Related: Time, Invention, Play)
"It is the genius of our Constitution that under its shelter of enduring institutions and rooted principles there is ample room for the rich fertility of American political invention."
- Lyndon B. Johnson
(Related: Genius, American, Constitution, Invention, Principles)
"People never knew we were poor, but out of that poverty came the most incredible inventions - board games, recipes... we never stopped inventing."
- Lynn Johnston
(Related: People, Games, Inventions, Poor, Poverty)
"Life is composed of different inventions."
- Mikhail Kalashnikov
(Related: Life, Inventions)
"I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists."
- Mikhail Kalashnikov
(Related: Invention)
"To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions."
- Dean Kamen
(Related: Fire, Inventions, Language)
"A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention."
- Dean Kamen
(Related: Ideas, Invention, Office)
"I consider high-speed data transmission an invention that became a major innovation. It changed the way we all communicate."
- Dean Kamen
(Related: Innovation, Invention)
"In some cases, inventions prohibit innovation because we're so caught up in playing with the technology, we forget about the fact that it was supposed to be important."
- Dean Kamen
(Related: Technology, Fact, Forget, Innovation, Inventions)
"I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention."
- Garry Kasparov
(Related: People, Democracy, Invention, Learning)
"Having the benefit to our society, not only here in the United States but throughout the world with the amount of invention you get from having a space program, is well worth the risk that an individual like myself has to take by flying in the vehicle."
- Mark Kelly
(Related: Society, Flying, Invention, Risk, Space, states, United, World, Worth)
"All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness."
- Mark Kennedy
(Related: Intelligence, Computer, Inventions, Laziness, Man)
"I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don't understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things."
- Ben Kingsley
(Related: People, Acting, Invention)
"I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started."
- Ray Kurzweil
(Related: Invention, Sense, World)
"Some people really want to play Mozart and be just performers. I was more interested in invention."
- Steve Lacy
(Related: People, Invention, Play, Want)
"We daily witness the beneficial effect produced to the community by the institution of premiums, held out to encourage the inventions of ingenious mechanics."
- Joseph Lancaster
(Related: Community, Effect, Inventions)
"As a child, my mother told me lots of fairy stories, many her own invention. She, too, tended to reverse the norm."
- Tanith Lee
(Related: Mother, Invention)
"Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention."
- Ninon de Lenclos
(Related: Virtue, Invention, Nothing)
"Feminine virtue is nothing but a convenient masculine invention."
- Ninon de Lenclos
(Related: Virtue, Invention, Nothing)
"The more a person learns how to use the forces of nature for his own purposes, by means of perfecting the sciences and the invention and improvement of machines, the more he will produce."
- Friedrich List
(Related: Nature, Improvement, Invention, Machines, Will)
"My invention, (the motion picture camera), can be exploited... as a scientific curiosity, but apart from that it has no commercial value whatsoever."
- Auguste Lumiere
(Related: Curiosity, Invention, Value)
"I said I have no powers of invention. Well, I also have no powers of mimicry."
- Norman MacCaig
(Related: Invention)
"Afternoon classes - that evil invention!"
- John Gresham Machen
(Related: Evil)
"Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention."
- Patrick Macnee
(Related: Invention, Television, Theater)
"Melodic invention is one of the surest signs of a divine gift."
- Gustav Mahler
(Related: Invention)
"But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities."
- Alfred Marshall
(Related: Money, Nature, Power, Inventions, Man, Value)
"The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce. Instantly."
- Demetri Martin
(Related: Invention)
"We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder."
- Andre Maurois
(Related: Love, Humanity, Inventions, Romantic)
"Most of them are doomed to rapid extinction, but a few may make evolutionary inventions, such as physiological, ecological, or behavioral innovations that give these species improved competitive potential."
- Ernst Mayr
(Related: Inventions, May, Potential)
"There's such a thing as theater discipline. One player doesn't appropriate another's inventions."
- Ethel Merman
(Related: Discipline, Inventions, Theater)
"Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education, and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace."
- Barbara Mikulski
(Related: Time, Education, America, College, Community, First, Future, Inventions, Students)
"It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being."
- John Stuart Mill
(Related: Being, Day, Inventions)
"One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar. Fiction and invention are of the very fabric of life."
- Henry Miller
(Related: Life, Fiction, Invention)
"The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad."
- John Moody
(Related: Inventions, Result, states, Today, United)
"I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago."
- Robert Moog
(Related: Computers, Time, Invention, Musicians)
"The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute."
- Samuel George Morton
(Related: Music, Talent, Imitation, Invention, Senses)
"The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing."
- Alva Myrdal
(Related: Communication, Inventions)
"The invention of basketball was not an accident. It was developed to meet a need. Those boys simply would not play 'Drop the Handkerchief.'"
- James Naismith
(Related: Accident, Basketball, Boys, Invention, Play)
"Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention."
- Fridtjof Nansen
(Related: Invention)
"The art of an artist must be his own art. It is... always a continuous chain of little inventions, little technical discoveries of one's own, in one's relation to the tool, the material and the colors."
- Emil Nolde
(Related: Art, Artist, Colors, Inventions)
"Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions."
- Joyce Carol Oates
(Related: Authority, Inventions, Passion)
"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father."
- Roger von Oech
(Related: Mother, Father, Invention, May, Necessity, Play)
"An invention has to make sense in the world it finishes in, not in the world it started."
- Tim O'Reilly
(Related: Invention, Sense, World)
"All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit."
- Thomas Paine
(Related: Power, Christian, Churches, Inventions, Mankind, Profit)
"The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge."
- Seymour Papert
(Related: Knowledge, Invention)
"A man with an invention on which he has spent his life, but has no means to get it developed for the good of humanity - or even patented for himself - must feel the pinch of poverty very acutely."
- James Payn
(Related: Life, Humanity, Invention, Poverty)
"Art is an invention of aesthetics, which in turn is an invention of philosophers... What we call art is a game."
- Octavio Paz
(Related: Art, Aesthetics, Invention)
"The real writer is one who really writes. Talent is an invention like phlogiston after the fact of fire. Work is its own cure. You have to like it better than being loved."
- Marge Piercy
(Related: Work, Talent, Being, Cure, Fact, Fire, Invention, Writer)
"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."
- Plato
(Related: Work, Accident, Inventions, Worth)
"Necessity... the mother of invention."
- Plato
(Related: Mother, Invention, Necessity)
"Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority."
- Henri Poincare
(Related: Infinite, Invention, Minority)
"Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing."
- Joshua Reynolds
(Related: Invention, Memory, Nothing)
"Necessity may well be called the mother of invention but calamity is the test of integrity."
- Samuel Richardson
(Related: Mother, Calamity, Integrity, Invention, May, Necessity)
"Any change in form produces a fear of change, and that has accelerated. Marketing is the death of invention, because marketing deals with the familiar."
- Nicolas Roeg
(Related: Change, Death, Fear, Deals, Invention, Marketing)
"America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there."
- Will Rogers
(Related: America, Inventions, Nation, Nothing)
"I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention. To not be like your parents. To not be like your friends. To be yourself. To cut yourself out of stone."
- Henry Rollins
(Related: Friends, Parents)
"But thanks to my invention, my capitalist friends and I were able to bring the government to its knees."
- Erno Rubik
(Related: Government, Friends, Invention)
"Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias."
- Bertrand Russell
(Related: Inventions, Order, Unity)
"The half hour between waking and rising has all my life proved propitious to any task which was exercising my invention... It was always when I first opened my eyes that the desired ideas thronged upon me."
- Walter Scott
(Related: Life, Ideas, Eyes, First, Invention, Waking)
"It is an invention of the devil, an infernal falsity for the destruction of all Christianity."
- Michael Servetus
(Related: Christianity, Destruction, Devil, Invention)
"O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention."
- William Shakespeare
(Related: Fire, Heaven, Invention)
"Of all human inventions the organization, a machine constructed of people performing interdependent functions, is the most powerful."
- Robert Shea
(Related: People, Inventions, Machine)
"Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of voice, but out of chaos."
- Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
(Related: Chaos, Invention, Voice)
"Destiny is the invention of the cowardly, and the resigned."
- Ignazio Silone
(Related: Destiny, Invention)
"Women's virtue is man's greatest invention."
- Cornelia Otis Skinner
(Related: Women, Virtue, Invention, Man)
"The very greatest things - great thoughts, discoveries, inventions - have usually been nurtured in hardship, often pondered over in sorrow, and at length established with difficulty."
- Samuel Smiles
(Related: Thoughts, Difficulty, Hardship, Inventions, Sorrow)
"Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up."
- Sydney Smith
(Related: Clothes, Invention)
"Markets are designed to allow individuals to look after their private needs and to pursue profit. It's really a great invention and I wouldn't under-estimate the value of that, but they're not designed to take care of social needs."
- George Soros
(Related: Care, Invention, Needs, Profit, Value)
"What I learned was the quality of continual reinvention."
- Merrie Spaeth
(Related: Quality)
"But I'm an adventurer. I like invention, I like discovery."
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Related: Discovery, Invention)
"And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition."
- Karlheinz Stockhausen
(Related: Invention)
"Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Age, Talent, Invention, Judgment, Youth)
"Interest is the spur of the people, but glory that of great souls. Invention is the talent of youth, and judgment of age."
- Jonathan Swift
(Related: Age, Talent, People, Glory, Interest, Invention, Judgment, Youth)
"Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end."
- Henry David Thoreau
(Related: Attention, End, Inventions, Pretty)
"I've never had plastic surgery, but if they made a new invention for making people taller, I'd be the first to have the surgery."
- Alanna Ubach
(Related: People, First, Invention)
"Men of genius sometimes accomplish most when they work the least, for they are thinking out inventions and forming in their minds the perfect idea that they subsequently express with their hands."
- Giorgio Vasari
(Related: Men, Work, Genius, Idea, Inventions, Thinking)
"Invention is the mother of necessity."
- Thorstein Veblen
(Related: Mother, Invention, Necessity)
"Music is not man's invention, but his heritage from the blessed spirits."
- Tomas Luis de Victoria
(Related: Music, Invention, Man, Spirits)
"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous."
- Leonardo da Vinci
(Related: Nature, Invention, Inventions, Nothing, Will)
"Animals can adapt to problems and make inventions, but often no faster than natural selection can do its work - the world acts as its own simulator in the case of natural selection."
- Vernor Vinge
(Related: Work, Animals, Inventions, Problems, World)
"In fact, death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an authentic corpse."
- George Wald
(Related: Death, Evolution, Fact, Invention)
"The concept of war crimes is an American invention."
- George Wald
(Related: War, American, Invention)
"I think software patents are a bad idea. Many patents are given for trivial inventions."
- Larry Wall
(Related: Idea, Inventions, Software)
"If this liberal potential is properly channeled, we may expect the area of freedom of the United States to increase. The problem is to spend up our rate of social invention in the service of the welfare of all the people."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: People, Freedom, Invention, Liberal, May, Potential, Service, states, United, Welfare)
"What we must understand is that the industries, processes, and inventions created by modern science can be used either to subjugate or liberate. The choice is up to us."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: Science, Choice, Inventions)
"Until democracy in effective enthusiastic action fills the vacuum created by the power of modern inventions, we may expect the fascists to increase in power after the war both in the United States and in the world."
- Henry A. Wallace
(Related: Power, War, Action, Democracy, Inventions, May, states, United, World)
"Mothers are the necessity of invention."
- Bill Watterson
(Related: Invention, Mothers, Necessity)
"In other words, what is supposedly found is an invention whose inventor is unaware of his act of invention, who considers it as something that exists independently of him; the invention then becomes the basis of his world view and actions."
- Paul Watzlawick
(Related: Act, Actions, Invention, Words, World)
"The right of an inventor to his invention is no monopoly - in any other sense than a man's house is a monopoly."
- Daniel Webster
(Related: Invention, Man, Right, Sense)
"A guilty conscience is the mother of invention."
- Carolyn Wells
(Related: Mother, Conscience, Invention)
"I am honored to be able to serve GM at this critical juncture and take part in its reinvention."
- Edward Whitacre, Jr.
"Science fiction readers probably have the gene for novelty, and seem to enjoy a cascade of invention as much as a writer enjoys providing one."
- Walter Jon Williams
(Related: Science, Fiction, Invention, Novelty, Writer)
"Wonderful invention, the phonograph. Keeps a man alive long after he's dead."
- P. J. Wolfson
(Related: Invention, Man)
"Our ability to create has outreached our ability to use wisely the products of our invention."
- Whitney M. Young
(Related: Ability, Invention)