Invention Quotes - Page 26

• Gregorian chant, Romanesque architecture, the Iliad , the invention of geometry were not, for the people through whom they were brought into being and made available to us, occasions for the manifestation of personality.

  Simone Weil

  People, Personality, Architecture

  Simone Weil (2015). “Selected Essays, 1934-1943: Historical, Political, and Moral Writings”, p.13, Wipf and Stock Publishers

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

  Nick Clooney

  America, Temples, Industry

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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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• Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act.

  Carl Menger

  States, Products

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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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• Compound interest on debt was the banker's greatest invention, to capture, and enslave, a productive society.

  Albert Einstein

  Bankers, Debt, Capture

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• I accept the resurrection of Easter Sunday not as an invention of the community of disciples, but as a historical event.

  Pinchas Lapide

  Easter, Sunday, Community

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• A global society is coming into being, a global society that is made out of information that was not intended to be ours, but is ours, by the mistaken invention of computers and the printing press, information is power, and information has spilled by the clumsy hands of the dominator culture so that the information is everywhere, never before has the situation been so fluid, we might be able to finally have a crack at this

  Terence McKenna

  Information Is Power, Hands, Cracks

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• [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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• You see, Dad, Professor McLuhan says that the environment that man creates becomes his medium for defining his role in it. The invention of type created linear, or sequential thought, separating thought from action. Now, with TV and folk singing, thought and action are closer and social involvement is greater. We again live in a village. Get it?

  Marshall McLuhan

  Dad, Men, Media

  Marshall McLuhan, Quentin Fiore, Jerome Agel (1996). “The medium is the massage: an inventory of effects”, Hardwired

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• Never will a time come when the most marvelous recent invention is as marvelous as a newborn child.

  Carl Sandburg

  Inspirational, Baby, Children

  Carl Sandburg (1948). “Remembrance Rock”

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• As we benefit from the inventions of others, we should be glad to share our own ... freely and gladly.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Benefits, Share, Should

  "It's the little things", www.pbs.org. 2002.

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• Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure.

  T. E. Brown

  Mirrors, Giving, Calling

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