Invention Quotes - Page 40

• The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Century, Nineteenth Century, Method

  Science and the ModernWorld ch. 6 (1925)

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• A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

  John Keats

  Stars, Long, Imagination

  Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 170

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• When I was growing up, when I was 11 years old I was listening to The Mothers of Invention. You know, I mean I was a Frank Zappa fan in Arkansas.

  Billy Bob Thornton

  Mother, Growing Up, Mean

  Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com

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• Why would you go anyplace without your iPad? This is the greatest invention. When it gets a little more power, my God. It's like my office.

  Scott Raab

  Ipads, Office, Littles

  Source: www.esquire.com

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• [A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

  Thomas Paine

  Christian, Church, Use

  "The Age of Reason". Book by Thomas Paine, 1794.

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• All my pictures are a kind of revision of my original idea. This is surely very different from the way in which Japanese or Chinese artists work: their themes are pre-ordained, whereas mine are invented at will.

  Antoni Tapies

  Artist, Ideas, Chinese

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• Money is not an invention of the state. It is not the product of a legislative act. Even the sanction of political authority is not necessary for its existence. Certain commodities came to be money quite naturally, as the result of economic relationships that were independent of the power of the state.

  Carl Menger

  Money, Independent, Power

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• Theories of genius are the peculiar constructions of our own philosophical times; ages of genius had passed away, and they left no other record than their works; no preconcerted theory described the workings of the imagination to be without imagination, nor did they venture to teach how to invent invention.

  Isaac D'Israeli

  Philosophical, Imagination, Age

  "The Literary Character, Illustrated by the History of Men of Genius". Book by Isaac D'Israeli, 1795 - 1822.

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• 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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• Absolute discretion is a ruthless master. It is more destructive of freedom than any of man's other inventions.

  William O. Douglas

  Men, Masters, Ruthless

  "United States v. Wunderlich, 342 U.S. 98". U.S. Supreme Court case, supreme.justia.com. November 26, 1951.

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• Well, I'm not able to work anymore as an actor and still at the level I would want to ... you start to lose your memory, you start to lose your confidence, you start to lose your invention. So, that's pretty much a closed book for me. And I'm grateful for the other things that have come into my life: grandkids, and restaurants and charity ... I've been doing it for 50 years. That's enough.

  Paul Newman

  Memories, Book, Grateful

  "Nightline's Last Interview With Paul Newman". ABC News interview, abcnews.go.com. May 2007.

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• A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea.

  Arthur Miller

  Ideas, Insanity, Important

  1958 The Collected Plays,'Introduction, II'.

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• Perhapsthemost sublimeinsights oftheJewishprophets and the Christian gospel is the knowledge that since perfection is love, the apprehension of perfection is at once the means of seeing one's imperfections and the consoling assurance of grace which makes this realization bearable. This ultimate paradox of high religion is not an invention of theologians or priests. It is constantly validated by the most searching experiences of life.

  Reinhold Niebuhr

  Christian, Mean, Perfection

  1934 Reflections on the End of an Era.

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• Contradictions if well understood and managed can spark off the fires of invention. Orthodoxy whether of the right or of the left is the graveyard of creativity.

  Chinua Achebe

  Creativity, Fire, Sparks

  Chinua Achebe (1988). “Anthills of the Savannah”, p.100, Heinemann

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• An essential aspect of creativity is not being afraid to fail. Scientists made a great invention by calling their activities hypotheses and experiments. They made it permissible to fail repeatedly until in the end they got the results they wanted. In politics or government, if you made a hypothesis and it didn't work out, you had your head cut off.

  Edwin Land

  Creativity, Cutting, Government

  "A Genius and His Magic Camera". LIFE magazine, October 27, 1972.

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• Remember, a word is an invention, a symbol for an idea. Written text began as an artistic representation of a thought or event.

  Edward J. Fraughton

  Ideas, Events, Artistic

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• Language is mankind’s greatest invention – except, of course, that it was never invented.

  Guy Deutscher

  Language, Mankind, Courses

  Guy Deutscher (2006). “The Unfolding of Language: An Evolutionary Tour of Mankind's Greatest Invention”, p.1, Macmillan

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• My own interest is the responsibility of people to be responsible for their own lives and, with their neighbors, for their public space and actions. To sing their own songs. To make their own inventions..To build and not just to envy. To light that candle which is so much better than cursing the darkness. To be as much as the human condition can sustain, rather than being only what a system can allow.

  Karl Hess

  Song, Responsibility, Light

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• An invention is something that was "impossible" up to then that's why governments grant patents.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Government, Patents, Impossible

  Robert A. Heinlein (1959). “The Door Into Summer”, Roc

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• Everything that we call Invention or Discovery in the higher sense of the word is the serious exercise and activity of an original feeling for truth, which, after a long course of silent cultivation, suddenly flashes out into fruitful knowledge.

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

  Exercise, Discovery, Long

  Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (2013). “Delphi Works of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (Illustrated)”, p.3588, Delphi Classics

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• Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

  William Shenstone

  Mother, May

  William Shenstone, Samuel Johnson, Robert Dodsley (1807). “Essays on men and manners; with aphorisms, criticisms, impromptus, fragments, etc”, p.129

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• Without invention nothing is well-spaced.

  William Carlos Williams

  Wells

  1948 Paterson, bk.2,'Sunday in the Park',1.

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• Since the invention of the flush toilet and the vacuum carpet cleaner, the modern man seems to judge a man's moral standards by his cleanliness, and thinks a dog the more highly civilized for having a weekly bath and a winter wrapper round his belly.

  Lin Yutang

  Dog, Winter, Men

  Yutang Lin (1939). “My country and my people”

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• To think that realistic fiction is by definition superior to imaginative fiction is to think imitation is superior to invention.

  Ursula K. Le Guin

  Thinking, Fiction, Definitions

  Ursula K. Le Guin (2004). “The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination”, p.210, Shambhala Publications

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• Look at the whole criminal correction game, which is a big piece of our economy. It's just an invention. Crime is being invented to put people to work.

  Jerry Brown

  Games, People, Criminals

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