Invention Quotes - Page 15

• It is a poor wit who lives by borrowing the words, decisions, mien, inventions and actions of others.

  Johann Kaspar Lavater

  Decision, Action, Poor

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• My main purpose in life is to make money so I can afford to go on creating more inventions.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Motivational, Creating, Purpose

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• By whatever means it is accomplished, the prime business of a play is to arouse the passions of its audience so that by the route of passion may be opened up new relationships between a man and men, and between men and Man. Drama is akin to the other inventions of man in that it ought to help us to know more, and not merely to spend our feelings.

  Arthur Miller

  Business, Drama, Passion

  Arthur Miller (2009). “Miller Plays: 1: All My Sons; Death of a Salesman; The Crucible; A Memory of Two Mondays; A View from the Bridge”, p.53, A&C Black

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• In antiquity there was only silence. In the nineteenth century, with the invention of the machine, Noise was born. Today, Noise triumphs and reigns supreme over the sensibility of men.

  Luigi Russolo

  Men, Silence, Triumph

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• If the government objects to monopoly prices for new inventions, it should stop granting patents.

  Ludwig von Mises

  Government, Patents, New Inventions

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• 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

  Encouragement, Community, Mechanic

  Joseph Lancaster (1807). “Improvements in Education, as it Respects the Industrious Classes of the Community: Containing Among Other Important Particulars, an Account of the Institution for the Education of One Thousand Poor Children, Borough Road, Southwark; and of the New System of Education on which it is Conducted”, p.154

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• Invention is an Heroic thing, and plac'd above the reach of a low, and vulgar Genius. It requires an active, a bold, a nimble, a restless mind: a thousand difficulties must be contemn'd with which a mean heart would be broken: many attempts must be made to no purpose: much Treasure must sometimes be scatter'd without any return: much violence, and vigour of thoughts must attend it: some irregularities, and excesses must be granted it, that would hardly be pardon'd by the severe Rules of Prudence.

  Thomas Sprat

  Mean, Heart, Science

  Thomas Sprat (1722). “The History of the Royal Society of London: For the Improving of Natural Knowledge”, p.392

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• Memory is the friend of wit, but the treacherous ally of invention; there are many books that owe their success to two things; good memory of those who write them, and the bad memory of those who read them

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Memories, Book, Writing

  Charles Caleb Colton (1836). “Lacon: Or, Many Things in Few Words, Addressed to Those who Think”, p.160

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• Go, write it in a martial hand; be curst and brief; it is no matter how witty, so it be eloquent and fun of invention: taunt him with the licence of ink: if thou thou'st him some thrice, it shall not be amiss; and as many lies as will lie in thy shee.

  William Shakespeare

  Witty, Fun, Lying

  William Shakespeare, Samuel Johnson, George Steevens, Isaac Reed (1778). “The Plays of William Shakespeare in Ten Volumes: With Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.232

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• The source of sexual power is curiosity, passion. You are watching its little flame die of asphyxiation. Sex does not thrive on monotony. Without feeling, inventions, moods, no surprises in bed. Sex must be mixed with tears, laughter, words, promises, scenes, jealousy, envy, all of the spices of fear, foreign travel, new faces, novels, stories, dreams, fantasies, music, dancing, opium, wine.

  Anais Nin

  Dream, Sex, Laughter

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• The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook - each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

  Daniel H. Wilson

  People, Generations, Gadgets

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• Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.

  James Dyson

  Great Inventions, Next, Moments

  "No innovator's dilemma here: in praise of failure" by James Dyson, www.wired.com. April 8, 2011.

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• The ‘I’ character in journalism is almost pure invention. Unlike the ‘I’ of autobiography, who is meant to be seen as a representation of the writer, the ‘I’ of journalism is connected to the writer only in a tenuous way—the way, say, that Superman is connected to Clark Kent. The journalistic ‘I’ is an overreliable narrator, a functionary to whom crucial tasks of narration and argument and tone have been entrusted, an ad hoc creation, like the chorus of Greek tragedy. He is an emblematic figure, an embodiment of the idea of the dispassionate observer of life.

  Janet Malcolm

  Character, Ideas, Greek

  "The Journalist and the Murderer". Book by Janet Malcolm, March 20, 1989.

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• America, the temple of invention and industry, doesn't make things anymore.

  Nick Clooney

  America, Temples, Industry

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• All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity - their links with their dead and the unborn.

  John Berger

  Heart, Names, Links

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• To be sure, the use of force by one party in a market transaction in order to improve his price was no invention of capitalism. Unequal exchange is an ancient practice. What was remarkable about capitalism as a historical system was the way in which this unequal exchange could be hidden; indeed, hidden so well that it is only after five hundred years of the operation of this mechanism that even the avowed opponents of the system have begun to unveil it systematically.

  Immanuel Wallerstein

  Party, Order, Years

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• Values cannot be speedily forgotten if it is inconvenient or commercially expedient. Values have to have meaning and longevity; otherwise they are valueless. You cannot embrace innovation up to a point or only sometimes. Branding demands commitment; commitment to continual re-invention; striking cords with people to stir their emotions; and commitment to imagination. It is easy to be cynical about such things, much harder to be successful.

  Richard Branson

  Commitment, Successful, Imagination

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• Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.

  Jonathan Sacks

  Mother, Challenges, Inspire

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• Steven Pinker says, the invention of printing and the widespread appearance of fiction -
  this taught empathy. If you read a novel, you're in someone else's head, in three, five different people's heads. Suddenly, the principle of "Don't do anything to anyone that you wouldn't want done to you" becomes real in people's minds. That's a fantastic achievement if fiction is indeed partly responsible for it. That's a great thing to be a part of. In the end, then, I don't know if writers have legislated, but they have civilized.

  Martin Amis

  Real, Achievement, Empathy

  Source: www.guernicamag.com

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• Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.

  Richard Dawkins

  Science, Differences, Way

  Richard Dawkins (2017). “Science in the Soul: Selected Writings of a Passionate Rationalist”, p.87, Random House

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• Th'invention all admir'd, and each, how he to be th'inventor miss'd; so easy it seem'd once found, which yet unfound most would have thought impossible.

  John Milton

  Science, Missing, Impossible

  John Milton, Samuel Johnson, John Evans (1799). “Milton's Paradise Lost: With the Life of the Author ; to which is Prefixed the Celebrated Critique by Sam Johnson LLD.”, p.177

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• In the modern world we have invented ways of speeding up invention, and people's lives change so fast that a person is born into one kind of world, grows up in another, and by the time his children are growing up, lives in still a different world

  Margaret Mead

  Children, Growing Up, Life Changing

  MARGARET MEAD (1959). “PEOPLE AND PLACES”

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• It is attention, more than any difference between minds and men.-In this is the source of poetic genius, and of the genius of discovery in science.-It was that led Newton to the invention of fluxions, and the discovery of gravitation, and Harvey to find out the circulation of the blood, and Davy to those views which laid the foundation of modern chemistry.

  Sir Benjamin Collins Brodie, 1st Baronet

  Success, Men, Discovery

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• You call a star a star, and say it is just a ball of matter moving on a mathematical course. But that is merely how you see it. By so naming things and describing them you are only inventing your own terms about them. And just as speech is invention about objects and ideas, so myth is invention about truth.

  Humphrey Carpenter

  Stars, Moving, Ideas

  Humphrey Carpenter (1977). “Tolkien: A Biography”, Boston : Houghton Mifflin

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• Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.

  Austin Kleon

  Thinking, Self, Machines

  Austin Kleon (2014). “Show Your Work!: 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered”, p.67, Workman Publishing

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