Invention Quotes - Page 11

• If e-mail had been around before the telephone was invented, people would have said, 'Hey, forget e-mail! With this new telephone invention I can actually talk to people!'.

  Thomas Friedman

  Service Culture, People, Hey

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• If kissing is man's greatest invention, then fermentation and patriarchy compete with the domestication of animals for the distinction of being man's worst folly, and no doubt the three combined long ago, the one growing out of the others, to foster civilization and lead Western humanity to its present state of decline.

  Tom Robbins

  Kissing, Men, Animal

  Tom Robbins (2003). “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”, p.285, Bantam

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• When scandal has new-minted an old lie,
  Or tax'd invention for a fresh supply,
  'Tis call'd a satire, and the world appears
  Gathering around it with erected ears;
  A thousand names are toss'd into the crowd,
  Some whisper'd softly, and some twang'd aloud,
  Just as the sapience of an author's brain,
  Suggests it safe or dangerous to be plain.

  William Cowper

  Lying, Names, Brain

  William Cowper, Henry Stebbing (1869). “The Complete Poetical Works of William Cowper, Esq: Including the Hymns and Translations from Madame Guion, Milton, Etc. ; with a Memoir of the Author”, p.124

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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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• 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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• Warfare ... is just an invention, older and more widespread than the jury system, but none the less an invention.

  Margaret Mead

  War, Warfare, Jury

  "Warfare Is Only an Invention - Not a Biological Necessity" (1940)

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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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• 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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• 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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• 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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• Once various forms were signed, I was separated from my free will, led down the corridors into a room which was now to be the boundary of my existence, told to surrender my clothes, handed that comic invention, the hospital gown, and sent to bed in broad daylight like a child being stripped of her privileges.

  Dorothy West

  Children, Clothes, Bed

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• Bearing in mind that "the market" is not an invention of capitalism but that it has existed for thousands of years in many different societies, social justice logically requires that the profits resulting from the operation of markets and infrastructures created by society be equitably shared within societies and in a larger context within the human family.

  Alfred-Maurice de Zayas

  Years, Justice, Mind

  "Interim report of the Independent Expert on the promotion of a democratic and equitable international order, Alfred Maurice de Zayas". August 09, 2012.

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• Although it is tempting to imagine an ancient era innocent of biochemical weaponry, in fact this Pandora's box of horrors was opened thousands of years ago. The history of making war with biological weapons begins in mythology, in ancient oral traditions that preserved records of actual events and ideas of the era before the invention of written histories.

  Adrienne Mayor

  War, Ideas, Years

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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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• Oft in dreams invention we bestow to change a flounce or add a furbelow.

  Alexander Pope

  Dream, Add

  Alexander Pope, Alexander Dyce (1835). “The Poetical Works of Alexander Pope”, p.81

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• evolution is a tinkerer, an ad-hocker, and a jury-rigger. It works with what it has on hand, not with what it has in mind. Some of its inventions prove elegant, while in others you can see the seams and dried glue.

  Natalie Angier

  Science, Hands, Mind

  Natalie Angier (2008). “The Canon: A Whirligig Tour of the Beautiful Basics of Science”, p.173, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• S. E. Smith's I Live in a Hut has a deceptively simple title, considering that the brain in that hut contains galaxies-worth of invention: At night when your soldiers are praying ceaselessly for less rain and more underwear my soldiers make underwear out of rain. These poems seesaw between despair and delight but delight is winning the battle. Smith is a somersaulting tightrope walker of a poet and her poems will make you look at anything and everything with new eyes: For days I tried to rub the new freckle // off my hand until I realized what it was / and began to grant it its sovereignty.

  Matthea Harvey

  Rain, Eye, Simple

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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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• 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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• It seems to me that God is a convenient invention of the human mind

  Isaac Asimov

  Mind, Humans, Convenient

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• I was 12 when I ordered my first guitar out of the worn and discolored pages of the Sears and Roebuck catalog. The story that I bought it on the installment plan is untrue, the invention of a Hollywood press agent. Local color. I paid cash, $8, money I had saved as a hired hand on my uncle Calvin's farm, baling and stacking hay. Prairie hay, used as feed for the cattle in winter. It was mean work for a wiry boy, but ambition made me strong.

  Gene Autry

  Strong, Uncles, Ambition

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• If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is not from God, how can infidels explain Jesus Christ? His existence in history they cannot deny. How is it that without force or bribery, without arms or money, He has made such an immensely deep mark on the world as He certainly has?

  J. C. Ryle

  Jesus, Men, World

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• There is one notable thing about our Christianity: bad, bloody, merciless, money-grabbing, and predatory. The invention of hell measured by our Christianity of today, bad as it is, hypocritical as it is, empty and hollow as it is, neither the deity nor his son is a Christian, nor qualified for that moderately high place. Ours is a terrible religion. The fleets of the world could swim in spacious comfort in the innocent blood it has spilled.

  Mark Twain

  Christian, Son, Blood

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• My current computer, in addition to 'DOS,' has 'Windows,' which is another invention of Bill Gates, designed as a security measure to thwart those users who are somehow able to get past DOS.

  Dave Barry

  Past, Bills, Able

  "Lost in cyberspace" by Dave Barry, www.washingtonpost.com. February 6, 1994.

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• The main ingredient of the first quantum revolution, wave-particle duality, has led to inventions such as the transistor and the laser that are at the root of the information society.

  Alain Aspect

  Roots, Information, Lasers

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