Invention Quotes - Page 24

• [Language is] really a pretty amazing invention if you think about it. Here I have a very complicated, messy, confused idea in my head. I'm sitting here making grunting sounds and hopefully constructing a similar messy, confused idea in your head that bears some analogy to it.

  Danny Hillis

  Motivation, Confused, Inspiration

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• We are not a Zappa cover band. We only play Frank's songs that were recorded by the Mothers of Invention and I think a lot of those songs were complex.

  Jimmy Carl Black

  Mother, Song, Thinking

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• Every child has a dream, to pursue the dream is in every child's hand to make it a reality. One's invention is another's tool.

  Samuel Morse

  Dream, Children, Reality

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• If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice.

  George Gobel

  Animal, Inventor, Mice

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• The test of an invention is the power of an inventor to push it through in the face of staunch-not opposition, but indifference-in society.

  Edwin Land

  Science, Tests, Faces

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• Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be part of it-we mean to lead it.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Mean, Space

  Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Program, delivered 12 September 1962, Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas

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• This Excellent Mathematician having given us, in the Transactions of February last, an account of the cause, which induced him to think upon Reflecting Telescopes, instead of Refracting ones, hath thereupon presented the curious world with an Essay of what may be performed by such Telescopes; by which it is found, that Telescopical Tubes may be considerably shortened without prejudice to their magnifiying effect. On his invention of the catadioptrical telescope, as he communicated to the Royal Society.

  Isaac Newton

  Science, Thinking, World

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• Fiction lags after truth, invention is unfruitful, and imagination cold and barren.

  Edmund Burke

  Truth, Imagination, Fiction

  Speech 'On Conciliation with America' 22 March 1775

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• Moment to moment, it turns out, is not God's conception, or nature's. It is man conversing with himself about and through a piece of machinery he created."We effectively became "time-keepers, and then time-savers, and now time-servers" with the invention of the clock."

  Lewis Mumford

  Men, Pieces, Clock

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• You're grumpy and broody and secretive all the time. You're no joy to live with, I can tell you that!""I smile sometimes. I even laughed about your . . . hat.""MacHalo," I corrected tightly. "It's a brilliant invention, and it means I don't need you or V'lane to keep my safe from Shades, and that, Jericho Barrons, is worth its weight in gold: not needing either of you for something!

  Karen Marie Moning

  Mean, Joy, I Don't Need You

  Karen Marie Moning (2016). “The Fever Series 7-Book Bundle: Darkfever, Bloodfever, Faefever, Dreamfever, Shadowfever, Iced, Burned”, p.529, Dell

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• Sheer necessity,-the proper parent of an art so nearly allied to invention.

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan

  Art, Parent, Sheer

  Richard Brinsley Sheridan (2014). “The Critic”, p.33, Bloomsbury Publishing

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• Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

  Jonathan Swift

  Knaves, Flattery, Young

  Jonathan Swift (1823). “The select works of Jonathan Swift ...: containing the whole of his poetical works ... embellished with engravings”, p.55

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• The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Men, Costumes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2010). “Essays and English Traits by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The Five Foot Shelf of Classics, Vol. V (in 51 Volumes)”, p.86, Cosimo, Inc.

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• In America the geography is sublime, but the men are not; the inventions are excellent, but the inventors one is sometimes ashamed of.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, America, Sublime

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1872). “The Prose Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Representative men. English traits. Conduct of life”, p.452

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• If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Improvement, Newspapers

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• We fixed on No. 4, Queen Street Place, for our City offices, and it was from there that so many of my patented inventions were dated.

  Henry Bessemer

  Queens, Cities, Office

  Sir Henry Bessemer (1905). “Sir Henry Bessemer, F.R.S.: An autobiography”

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• Money is only a human invention. I get paid for my work, it's a system of trade, but it's not my purpose and reason for living.

  Vanna Bonta

  Money, Purpose, Reason

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• Work outside of school hours was a necessity at an early age, and with such time as I had I turned toward interests of my own devising, making things, experimenting, and planning for the future. I had read of Thomas Alva Edison and other successful inventors, and the idea of making an invention appealed to me as one of the few available means to accomplish a change in one's economic status, while at the same time bringing to focus my interest in technical things and making it possible to make a contribution to society as well.

  Chester Carlson

  School, Mean, Successful

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• I do not share the pessimism of the age about the novel. They are one of our greatest spiritual, aesthetic and intellectual inventions. As a species it is story that distinguishes us, and one of the supreme expressions of story is the novel. Novels are not content. Nor are they are a mirror to life or an explanation of life or a guide to life. Novels are life, or they are nothing.

  Richard Flanagan

  Spiritual, Mirrors, Expression

  "Man Booker prize-winner Richard Flanagan's acceptance speech in full" by Richard Flanagan, www.theguardian.com. October 14, 2014.

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• A book is one of the most patient of all man's inventions. Centuries mean nothing to a well-made book. It awaits its destined reader, come when he may, with eager hand and seeing eye. Then occurs one of the great examples of union, that of a man with a book, pleasurable, sometimes fruitful, potentially world-changing, simple; and in a library...witho ut cost to the reader.

  Lawrence Clark Powell

  Book, Mean, Eye

  Lawrence Clark Powell (1985). “Books are basic: the essential Lawrence Clark Powell”, Univ of Arizona Pr

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• The Bible must be the invention either of good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. However, it was not written by good men, because good men would not tell lies by saying 'Thus saith the Lord;' it was not written by bad men because they would not write about doing good duty, while condemning sin, and themselves to hell; thus, it must be written by divine inspiration

  Charles Wesley

  Lying, Inspiration, Angel

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• Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.

  Russell Baker

  Discovery, Class, Television

  Russell Baker (1991). “There's a Country in My Cellar”, Avon Books

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• People who have read a good deal rarely make great discoveries. I do not say this in excuse of laziness, but because invention presupposes an extensive independent contemplation of things.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Independent, Discovery, People

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• Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an 'intelligence explosion,' and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make.

  I. J. Good

  Clever, Men, Design

  "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine". Advances in Computers, vol. 6, 1965.

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• Motors make noise and that tells you about the feelings and attitudes that went into it. Something was more important than sensory pleasure - nobody would invent a chair or dish that smelled bad or that made horrible noises - why were motors invented noisy? How could they possibly be considered complete or successful inventions with this glaring defect? Unless, of course, the aggressive, hostile, assaultive sound actually served to express some impulse of the owner.

  Philip Slater

  Attitude, Successful, Feelings

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