Devices Quotes

• Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

  George Bernard Shaw

  Freedom, Sarcasm, Political

  48 Copy quote

• All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work.

  Thomas J. Watson

  Hard Work, Men, Thinking

  29 Copy quote
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  Corporation: An ingenious device for obtaining profit without individual responsibility.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Inspirational, Sarcastic, Business

  Ambrose Bierce (2015). “The Eyes of the Panther (Cryptofiction Classics - Weird Tales of Strange Creatures)”, p.20, Read Books Ltd

  20 Copy quote

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• A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier.

  H. L. Mencken

  Freedom, Crazy, Ignorance

  "A Mencken Chrestomathy". Book by H. L. Mencken, 1949.

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• Purring would seem to be, in her case, an automatic safety-valve device for dealing with happiness overflow.

  Monica Edwards

  Cat, Animal, Safety

  67 Copy quote

• All for one, one for all, that is our device.

  Alexandre Dumas

  Unity, Three Musketeers

  Alexandre Dumas (1878). “The Three Musketeers”, p.74, ebookfreedom

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• Press on! for in the grave there is no work and no device. Press on! while yet you may.

  Nathaniel Parker

  Work, May, Graves

  3 Copy quote

• By his very success in inventing labor-saving devices, modern man has manufactured an abyss of boredom that only the privileged classes in earlier civilizations have ever fathomed.

  Lewis Mumford

  Success, Science, Men

  "The Conduct Of Life". Book by Lewis Mumford, 1951.

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• Utopianism is probably a necessary social device for generating the superhuman efforts without which no major revolution is achieved.

  Eric Hobsbawm

  Effort, Revolution, Social

  Eric J. Hobsbawm (1971). “Primitive Rebels: Studies in Archaic Forms of Social Movement in the 19th and 20th Centuries”, p.60, Manchester University Press

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• Of all the creative work produced by humans anywhere, a tiny fraction has continuing commercial value. For that tiny fraction, the copyright is a crucially important legal device.

  Lawrence Lessig

  Creative, Important, Tiny

  Lawrence Lessig “Free Culture”, Lulu.com

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• The world has arrived at an age of cheap complex devices of great reliability, and something is bound to come of it.

  Vannevar Bush

  Age, Reliability, World

  Vannevar Bush (1946). “Endless horizons”

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• On close inspection, this device turned out to be a funereal juke box - the result of mixing Lloyd's of London with the principle of the chewing gum dispenser.

  Cecil Beaton

  Mixing, Principles, Gum

  20 Copy quote

• A nuclear weapon of some dimension, whether it's actually a nuclear weapon, or a dirty bomb, or some kind of radiological device. Yes, I think it's probably a near thing.

  Michael Scheuer

  Dirty, Thinking, Nuclear

  4 Copy quote

• The most popular labor saving device is still money.

  Phyllis George

  Money, Memorable, Saving

  11 Copy quote

• Any device in science is a window on to nature, and each new window contributes to the breadth of our view.

  C. F. Powell

  Views, Window, Breadth

  8 Copy quote

• Science consistently produces a new crop of miraculous truths and dazzling devices every year.

  Kary Mullis

  Years, Crops, Produce

  15 Copy quote

• Most of the people who had PCs did not have modems and could not use those PCs as communicating devices. They really were using them for spreadsheets or word processing or storing recipes or playing games or what have you.

  Steve Case

  Playing Games, People, Use

  4 Copy quote

• To my knowledge, the Department of Homeland Security has focused on detection devices that are large, expensive, use a large amount of energy, and cannot easily be placed in or on a shipping container.

  Jim Ryun

  Energy, Use, Shipping

  19 Copy quote

• Diplomacy means all the wicked devices of the Old World, spheres of influence, balances of power, secret treaties, triple alliances, and, during the interim period, appeasement of Fascism.

  Barbara Tuchman

  Mean, Power, Secret

  16 Copy quote

• I was lucky because logarithmic plots are a device of the devil.

  Charles Francis Richter

  Devil, Plot, Lucky

  6 Copy quote

• The criminal law needs to be improved to meet new forms of crime, but to denounce financial devices which are useful and legitimate because use is made of them for fraud, is ridiculous and unworthy of the age in which we live.

  William Graham Sumner

  Law, Hype, Age

  13 Copy quote

• Those are the things that, in the wrong hands - and certainly in our war on terrorism we also must attack proliferation and those nations that proliferate with chemical, biological and nuclear type devices, because that can cause the most catastrophic results.

  Hugh Shelton

  War, Hands, Nuclear

  4 Copy quote

• I believe that these devices like repetition and rhyme are not artificial, that they're not imposed, somehow, on the language.

  Paul Muldoon

  Believe, Rhyming, Language

  Interview with John Redmond, www.poetrymagazines.org.uk. November 2, 1995.

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• A veritable incubator of short cuts, schemes and devices to overcome the truth.

  David Stockman

  Cutting, Hair, Overcoming

  David Stockman (2013). “The Triumph of Politics: Why the Reagan Revolution Failed”, p.75, PublicAffairs

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• Many societies have educated their male children on the simple device of teaching them not to be women.

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Teaching, Simple

  Margaret Mead (1975). “Male and female: a study of the sexes in a changing world”, William Morrow & Co

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