Invention Quotes - Page 10

• Speech ... is an invention of man's to prevent him from thinking.

  Agatha Christie

  Men, Thinking, Speech

  Agatha Christie (1984). “Five complete Hercule Poirot novels”, Random House Value Pub

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• For one thing, there are many "inventions" that are not patentable. The "inventor" of the supermarket, for example, conferred great benefits on his fellowmen for which he could not charge them. Insofar as the same kind of ability is required for the one kind of invention as for the other, the existence of patents tends to divert activity to patentable inventions.

  Milton Friedman

  Patents, Example, Benefits

  Milton Friedman (2009). “Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition”, p.127, University of Chicago Press

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• Guilt is a Jewish invention improved upon by Christians for the last two thousand years.

  Rita Mae Brown

  Christian, Years, Two

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• There are many ways of asking a favor; but to assume that you are granting the favor that you ask shows spirit and invention.

  Agnes Repplier

  Asking, Favors, Way

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• Sometimes, instead of helping people to advance, a discovery or an invention holds them back.

  Margaret Mead

  Technology, Discovery, People

  MARGARET MEAD (1959). “PEOPLE AND PLACES”

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• One of the effects of modern liberal Protestantism has been gradually to turn religion into poetry and therapy, to make truth vaguer and vaguer and more and more relative, to banish intellectual distinctions, to depend on feeling instead of thought, and gradually to come to believe that God has no power, that he cannot communicate with us, cannot reveal himself to us, indeed has not done so, and that religion is our own sweet invention.

  Flannery O'Connor

  Sweet, Women, Believe

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• All the beautiful orders of architecture and creations of the pencil, all the conceptions of the beautiful in nature and art and humanity, are inventions extorted, as it were, from the mind to extend and increase the pleasures of sense.

  Elihu Burritt

  Beautiful, Art, Order

  Elihu Burritt, Mary Botham Howitt (1854). “Thoughts and things at home and abroad”, p.72

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• I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.

  John Ruskin

  Believe, Greatness, Men

  John Ruskin (2013). “The Stones of Venice -: The Fall”, p.158, Cosimo, Inc.

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• Somehow I felt that if Fox Talbot had had more time and more drawing talent, he would have filled in the interval between his two drawings and made a complete panorama. Now, 163 years later, I was able to use his great invention to elaborate on his youthful dream of capturing and fixing the fleeting image. In doing so, I may also have added another little bit to the soul of this extraordinary place.

  John Pfahl

  Dream, Drawing, Filled In

  John Pfahl (1997). “Permutations on the picturesque”

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• Becoming a woman is an act partly of nature and partly of self-invention.

  Caitlin Flanagan

  Women, Self, Becoming A Woman

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• From this haunting feeling of being not wanted, which remained a recurrent haunt through life, I found two ways of escape, both of which in changing form also persisted. One was the invention of gods, the other was personal efficiency in work.

  Anna Louise Strong

  Two, Feelings, Way

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• But though every created thing is, in this sense, a mystery, the word mystery cannot be applied to moral truth, any more than obscurity can be applied to light. ... Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion. Truth never envelops itself in mystery, and the mystery in which it is at any time enveloped is the work of its antagonist, and never of itself.

  Thomas Paine

  Light, Fog, Religion

  Thomas Paine “The Writings of Thomas Paine”, Jazzybee Verlag

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• I don't know if fury can compete with necessity as the mother of invention, but I recommend it.

  Gloria Steinem

  Mother, Anger, Fury

  Gloria Steinem (2012). “Moving Beyond Words: Essays on Age, Rage, Sex, Power, Money, Muscles: Breaking the Boundaries of Gender”, p.9, Open Road Media

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• Mystery is the antagonist of truth. It is a fog of human invention, that obscures truth, and represents it in distortion.

  Thomas Paine

  Fog, Mystery, Distortion

  Thomas Paine (1818). “The theological works of Thomas Paine”, p.46

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• [Rhyme is] but the invention of a barbarous age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meter; ... Not without cause therefore some both Italian and Spanish poets of prime note have rejected rhyme, ... as have also long since our best English tragedies, as... trivial and of no true musical delight; which [truly] consists only in apt numbers, fit quantity of syllables, and the sense variously drawn out from one verse into another, not in the jingling sound of like endings, a fault avoided by the learned ancients both in poetry and all good oratory.

  John Milton

  Italian, Numbers, Long

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• The critic is beneath the maker, but is his needed friend. The critic is not a base caviler, but the younger brother of genius. Next to invention is the power of interpreting invention; next to beauty the power of appreciating beauty. And of making others appreciate it.

  Margaret Fuller

  Brother, Appreciate, Genius

  Margaret Fuller (1973). “The Writings of Margaret Fuller”, Augustus m Kelley Pubs

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• Whosoever loves not picture is injurious to truth, and all the wisdom of poetry. Picture is the invention of heaven, the most ancient and most akin to nature. It is itself a silent work, and always one and the same habit.

  Ben Jonson

  Heaven, Ancient, Silent

  Ben Jonson, William Gifford (1816). “The Works: In 9 Volumes. ... containing Underwoods, translations, &c. Discoveries. English grammar. Jonsonus viribus”, p.206

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• I think the most beautiful inventions are the ones you don't think of.

  Diane Arbus

  Beautiful, Thinking, Photographer

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• Automobile is one of the most successful inventions of all time, but in my view, it is thoroughly obsolete already. And so by fundamentally rethinking the automobile, thinking of it as a robot on four wheels, essentially, something that can communicate with other intelligent devices, it can operate in a coordinated way, you can really start to fundamentally rethink urban personal mobility.

  William J. Mitchell

  Successful, Intelligent, Thinking

  Source: bigthink.com

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• Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

  John Tillotson

  Truth, Lying, Men

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• The first inventions of commerce are, like those of all other arts, cunning and short-sighted.

  John Philpot Curran

  Art, Firsts, Cunning

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• The city is a cultural invention enforcing on the citizen knowledge of his own nature. And this we do not like. That we are aggressive beings, easily given to violence; that we get along together because we must more than because we want to, and that the brotherhood of man is about as far from reality today as it was two thousand years ago; that reason's realm is small; that we never have been and never shall be created equal; that if the human being is perfectible, he has so far exhibited few symptoms - all are considerations of man from which space tends to protect us.

  Robert Ardrey

  Reality, Men, Years

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• Music and art are two very different activities for me. However, the use of imagery links them, and invention is important for both.

  Ed Askew

  Art, Two, Important

  Interview with Christian Filardo, logger.believermag.com. November 27, 2013.

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• There is an unlucky tendency ... to allow every new invention to add to life's complications, and every new power to increase life's hustling; so that, unless we can dominate the mischief, we are really the worse off instead of the better.

  Vernon Lee

  Hustle, Progress, Add

  Vernon Lee (1904). “Hortus vitae : essays on the garden of life”

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• we can't be creative if we refuse to be confused. Change always starts with confusion; cherished interpretations must dissolve to make way for what's new. Great ideas and inventions miraculously appear in the space of not knowing.

  Margaret J. Wheatley

  Change, Confused, Ideas

  Margaret J. Wheatley (2002). “Turning to One Another: Simple Conversations to Restore Hope to the Future”, p.37, Berrett-Koehler Publishers

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