Invention Quotes - Page 32

• Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion more interesting than the inventions themselves.

  Gottfried Leibniz

  Math, Interesting, Important

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• Some of the greatest advances in mathematics have been due to the invention of symbols, which it afterwards became necessary to explain; from the minus sign proceeded the whole theory of negative quantities.

  Aldous Huxley

  Math, Negative, Minus

  Aldous Huxley (1961). “Selected Essays”

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• O, mighty, divinely delimited wisdom of walls, boundaries! I is perhaps the most magnificent of all inventions. Man ceased to be a wild animal only when he build the first wall. Men ceased to be a wild man only when we built the Green Wall, only when, by means of that wall, we isolated our perfect machine world from the irrational, ugly world of trees, birds, and animals.

  Yevgeny Zamyatin

  Wall, Mean, Men

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• You of the West are practical in business, practical in great inventions, but we of the East are practical in religion. You make commerce your business; we make religion our business.

  Swami Vivekananda

  Business, Great Inventions, East

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• An iron rod being placed on the outside of a building from the highest part continued down into the moist earth, in any direction strait or crooked, following the form of the roof or other parts of the building, will receive the lightning at its upper end, attracting it so as to prevent it's striking any other part; and, affording it a good conveyance into the earth, will prevent its damaging any part of the building.

  Benjamin Franklin

  Science, Iron, Lightning

  Benjamin Franklin, Edmund Sears Morgan (2007). “Not Your Usual Founding Father: Selected Readings from Benjamin Franklin”, p.119, Yale University Press

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• If we look at the fact, we shall find that the great inventions of the age are not, with us at least, always produced in universities.

  Charles Babbage

  Age, Great Inventions, Looks

  Charles Babbage (1830). “Reflections on the Decline of Science in England, and on Some of Its Causes”, p.21

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• A mind does not receive truth as a chest receives jewels that are put into it, but as the stomach takes up food into the system. It is no longer food, but flesh, and is assimilated. The appetite and the power of digestion measure our right to knowledge. He has it who can use it. As soon as our accumulation overruns our invention or power to use, the evils of intellectual gluttony begin,— congestion of the brain, apoplexy and strangulation.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Jewels, Evil, Mind

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1893). “Natural history of intellect and other papers”

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• I think Russian people are learning that democracy is not an alien thing; it's not a western invention.

  Garry Kasparov

  Thinking, People, Democracy

  Interview with Monica Attard, Australian Broadcasting Company, April 03, 2005.

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• Experiments in the visual arts (the invention of new ways of seeing things), are made because, due to the way the apparatus that makes up the mind is made, old processes and patterns have continually to be broken up in order to make it possible to perceive the new aspects and arrangements of evolving consciousness. The great enemy of intelligence is complacency.

  John Dos Passos

  Art, Order, Broken

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• The very nature of these inventions cries out for the goodness in men; cries out for universal brotherhood; for the unity of us all.

  Charlie Chaplin

  Men, Unity, Brotherhood

  "Fictional character: Hynkel (Dictator of Tomania / A Jewish Barber)". "The Great Dictator", www.imdb.com. October 15, 1940.

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• Peanut butter is the greatest invention since Christianity.

  Diana Vreeland

  Peanut Butter, Peanuts, Christianity

  "New again: Diana Vreeland" by Jonathan Lieberson, www.interviewmagazine.com. July 2, 2014.

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• The only way art lives is through the experience of the observer. The reality of art begins with the eyes of the beholder, through imagination, invention and confrontation.

  Keith Haring

  Art, Eye, Reality

  "Haring – Art in Transit" by Keith Haring, www.haring.com.

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• The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs. This is the difficult task of the inventor who is often misunderstood and unrewarded. But he finds ample compensation in the pleasing exercises of his powers and in the knowledge of being one of that exceptionally privileged class without whom the race would have long ago perished in the bitter struggle against pitiless elements. . . .

  Nikola Tesla

  Struggle, Exercise, Men

  Nikola Tesla (2013). “My Inventions”, Lulu Press, Inc

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• Buy boots you can walk in. Walk in them. Even if you lessen the income of the General Omnibus Company, or your family doctor; you will discover the human foot. On discovering it, your joy will be as great as if you had invented it. But this joy is the greatest, because no human invention even of Mr. Ford or Mr. Marconi is within a mile of a foot.

  Vincent McNabb

  Doctors, Feet, Joy

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• The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Taken, Office, Patents

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2459, Delphi Classics

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• If the finding of Coines, Medals, Urnes, and other Monuments of famous Persons, or Towns, or Utensils, be admitted for unquestionable Proofs, that such Persons or things have, in former Times, had a being, certainly those Petrifactions may be allowed to be of equal Validity and Evidence, that there have been formerly such Vegetables or Animals. These are truly Authentick Antiquity not to be counterfeited, the Stamps, and Impressions, and Characters of Nature that are beyond the Reach and Power of Humane Wit and Invention, and are true universal Characters legible to all rational Men.

  Robert Hooke

  Character, Men, Animal

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• Arithmetic starts with the integers and proceeds by successively enlarging the number system by rational and negative numbers, irrational numbers, etc... But the next quite logical step after the reals, namely the introduction of infinitesimals, has simply been omitted. I think, in coming centuries it will be considered a great oddity in the history of mathematics that the first exact theory of infinitesimals was developed 300 years after the invention of the differential calculus.

  Abraham Robinson

  Thinking, Oddities, Discovery

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• As far as I'm concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.

  Mose Allison

  Swings, Personality, Essentials

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• But don't despise error. When touched by genius, when led by chance, the most superior truth can come into being from even the most foolish error. The important inventions which have been brought about in every realm of science from false hypotheses number in the hundreds, indeed in the thousands.

  Stefan Zweig

  Errors, Numbers, Important

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• California is a place of invention, a place of courage, a place of vision, a place of the future. People who made California what it is were willing to take risks, think outside convention and build.

  Nicolas Berggruen

  Thinking, California, People

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• Utterly ingenious! Tiffany Trent has more fine invention at her fingertips than a roomful of magical Leonardos!

  Ellen Kushner

  Fingertips, Fine, Leonardo

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• There aren't really rules for painting, but there’s certain facts and fictions about painting. Part of what I do is document another surface and sort of translate it. They’re like translations, and then part of it is fiction, which is invention.

  Vija Celmins

  Fiction, Facts, Painting

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• When you look at the Asians, the Asian is very gifted in creation, creativity and inventions. If you go to Japan or any Asian country, they can turn a television into a watch. They're very creative. And you look at the Indians, they have been very gifted in the spirituality.

  Reggie White

  Country, Creativity, Japan

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• And Toronto's own Sergio Trujillo has redone his choreography totally, showing all the comical invention that we know he's capable of.

  Richard Ouzounian

  Toronto, Choreography, Knows

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• As you know, I don't believe in fear, just an invention by men so they get all the money and good jobs.

  Marian Keyes

  Jobs, Fear, Believe

  "Anybody Out There". Book by Marian Keyes, February 8, 2007.

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