Invention Quotes - Page 4

• Death is very likely the single best invention of life. It is life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

  Steve Jobs

  Change, Graduation, Death

  Commencement Address at Stanford University, delivered 12 June 2005, Palo Alto, CA

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• If anybody here has trouble with the concept of design humility, reflect on this: It took us 5,000 years to put wheels on our luggage.

  William McDonough

  Motivation, Inspiration, Humility

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• My first time I jacked off, I thought I'd invented it. I looked down at my sloppy handful of junk and thought, This is going to make me rich.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Sex, Teenager, Funny Relationship

  Chuck Palahniuk (2001). “Choke: A Novel”, Anchor Books

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• Democracy is a con game. It’s a word invented to placate people to make them accept a given institution. All institutions sing, ‘We are free.’ The minute you hear ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy’, watch out… because in a truly free nation, no one has to tell you you’re free.

  Jacque Fresco

  Freedom, Acceptance, Games

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• The narrow gauge mindset of the past is insufficient for today’s
  wicked problems. We can no longer play the music as written.
  Instead, we have to invent a whole new scale.

  Marty Neumeier

  Music, Past, Play

  Marty Neumeier (2009). “The Designful Company: How to build a culture of nonstop innovation”, p.27, Peachpit Press

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• What man-made machine will ever achieve the complete perfection of even the goose's wing?

  Abbas ibn Firnas

  Men, Wings, Perfection

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• Necessity, the mother of invention.

  George Farquhar

  Mother, Philosophical, Motherhood

  "The Twin Rivals". Book by George Farquhar, 1702.

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• The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves - the creature of habits and infirmities.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Men, Genius, Care

  "Literary Character of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, chapter XVI, 1795-1822.

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• No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new.

  Steve Jobs

  Inspirational, Death, Stanford University

  Commencement Address at Stanford University, delivered 12 June 2005, Palo Alto, CA

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• Death is the destination we all share, no one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be because death is very likely the single best invention of life.

  Steve Jobs

  Death, Best Job, Stanford University

  Commencement Address at Stanford University, delivered 12 June 2005, Palo Alto, CA

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• If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

  Voltaire

  God, Atheist, Religion

  Epitres no. 96, "A l'Auteur du Livre des Trois Imposteurs" (1770) See Ovid 2

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• An invention can be so valuable as to be worthless to the inventor.

  Eli Whitney

  Inventor, Valuable, Worthless

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• The real use of gunpowder is to make all men tall.

  Thomas Carlyle

  Real, Men, Gunpowder

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• There is no difference between science and art when it comes to creativeness, productiveness, to come to conclusions and to formulations.

  Josef Albers

  Art, Differences, Conclusion

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• Invention is arrived at by intelligent stumbling.

  Amar Bose

  Intelligent, Programming, Stumbling

  "Spotlight: Amar Bose, the guru of sound design" by Roxana Popescu, www.nytimes.com. May 11, 2007.

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• Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

  Leonardo da Vinci

  Beauty, Beautiful, Nature

  Leonardo Da Vinci (1938). “The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci”

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• The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

  Jean Cocteau

  Poetry, Poetic, Poet

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• There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about.

  Helen Frankenthaler

  Inspirational, Art, Breaking Rules

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• The great creators - the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors - stood alone against the men of their time. Every great new thought was opposed. Every great new invention was denounced. The first motor was considered foolish. The airplane was considered impossible... But the men of unborrowed vision went ahead. They fought, they suffered and they paid. But they won.

  Ayn Rand

  Airplane, Artist, Men

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.72, Penguin

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• Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Spring, Believe, Science

  Ambrose Bierce (2009). “The Devil's Dictionary: Easyread Super Large 18pt Edition”, p.180, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• This is the patent age of new inventions for killing bodies, and for saving souls. All propagated with the best intentions.

  Lord Byron

  Birthday, Soul, Age

  Lord Byron, Donald A. Low (2013). “Byron: Selected Poetry and Prose”, p.170, Routledge

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• Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Confused, Imagination, Should

  Igor Stravinsky (1970). “Poetics of Music in the Form of Six Lessons”, p.53, Harvard University Press

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• I invented nothing new. I simply combined the inventions of others into a car. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed.

  Henry Ford

  Years, Car, Connections

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• Inventions that are not made, like babies that are not born, are rarely missed.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Baby, Born, Made

  "The Affluent Society".

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• I believe in human dignity as the source of national purpose, human liberty as the source of national action, the human heart as the source of national compassion, and in the human mind as the source of our invention and our ideas

  John F. Kennedy

  Kindness, Believe, Heart

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