Invention Quotes · Page 37

It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

How little do the most wonderful inventions of modern times detain us. They insult nature. Every machine, or particular application, seems a…

— Henry David Thoreau

Luxury, not necessity, is the mother of invention. Every artifact is somewhat wanting in its function, and that is what drives its…

— Henry Petroski

I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz - the…

— Brian Stokes Mitchell

What novels do that biographies don't is get at truths by penetrating the facts, by going deeper to what's underneath fact, through…

— Varley O'Connor

Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority.

— Henri Poincare

My bookshelves chiefly function as a snapshot of what I was reading prior to the invention of the Kindle.

— Charlie Brooker

And I believe what I believe / Is what makes me what I am / I did not make it, no it…

— Rich Mullins

Not until Freud's writings became popular did descriptions of infants center on relationships with their mothers. The idea that children have feelings…

— Sandra Scarr

James Lovelock is one of the great thinkers of our time. His ideas and inventions have opened up new insights into our…

— Chris Rapley

Don't underestimate the therapeutic value of gardening. It's the one area where we can all use our nascent creative talents to make…

— Geoff Hamilton

Wherever we look in the ancient world the past has been controlled, but nowhere more rigorously than in the history of the…

— Hugh Nibley

The invention of writs was really the making of the English Common Law; and the credit of this momentous achievement, which took…

— Edward Jenks

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show…

— George Gilder

There aren't really rules for painting, but there’s certain facts and fictions about painting. Part of what I do is document another…

— Vija Celmins

Numberless have been the systems of iniquity contrived by the great for the gratification of this passion in themselves; but in none…

— John Adams

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of…

— Erica Jong

Let's turn British inventions into British industries, British factories and British jobs. Let them make pounds for us, not dollars marks or…

— John Major

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies…

— Jared Diamond

Sightseeing was ... based on imaginative invention, like rehearsing your own play in stage sets from which all the actors had fled.

— Paul Theroux

It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes.

— Oscar Wilde

Death seems to have been a rather late invention in evolution. One can go a long way in evolution before encountering an…

— George Wald

A lot of the Google inventions came from engineers just screwing around with ideas. And then management would see them, and we'd…

— Eric Schmidt

I make no special difference between architecture and design, they are two different stages of invention.

— Ettore Sottsass

Realize that a drawing is not a copy. It is a construction in very different materials. A drawing is an invention.

— Robert Henri

To me, Los Angeles was the invention of the suburb. They figured it out and perfected it and created a city that…

— Edward Burtynsky

Take the whole range of imaginative literature, and we are all wholesale borrowers. In every matter that relates to invention, to use,…

— Wendell Phillips

[A]ll the ingenious men, and all the scientific men, and all the fanciful men, in the world,... could never invent, if all…

— Charles Kingsley

The art of making love, muffled up in furs, in the open air, with the thermometer at Zero, is a Yankee invention.

— John Quincy Adams

Innovation transforms the useful seeds of invention into widely adopted solutions valued above every existing alternative.

— Braden Kelley

The invention of the arts, and other things which serve the common use and convenience of life, is a gift of God…

— John Calvin

“What will make you great today will never make you great tomorrow! The airplane that Wilbur and Orville Wright invented in 1906…

— Israelmore Ayivor

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

— Henry George

Forgiveness is God's invention for coming to terms with a world in which people are unfair to each other and hurt each…

— Lewis B. Smedes

People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because…

— Georg C. Lichtenberg

The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge.

— Seymour Papert

When I did inventions, I always thought only of the invention itself, but the kids would ask for marketing materials.

— Ken Hakuta

I figured out that art would be the perfect place for me because what's encouraged is the invention of languages.

— David Altmejd

The invention of basketball was not an accident. It was developed to meet a need. Those boys simply would not play 'Drop…

— James Naismith

The practice of narrative and argument does not lead to invention, but it compels a certain coherence of thought.

— Jean Piaget