Inventor Quotes - Page 10

• The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don't have PhDs.

  Freeman Dyson

  Real, Roots, People

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• It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.

  Freeman Dyson

  Adventure, Shame, Scientist

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• An inventor's path is chorused with groans, riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches.

  James Dyson

  Scratches, Fists, Path

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• It is astounding that man, the instigator, inventor and vehicle of all these developments, the originator of all judgements and decisions and the planner of the future, must make himself such a quantité negligeable.

  Carl Jung

  Men, Decision, Instigators

  Carl Gustav Jung (2013). “The Undiscovered Self”, p.31, Routledge

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• I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Atheism, Proud, Weapons

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• Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Motivational, Positive, Perseverance

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• Japan's very interesting. Some people think it copies things. I don't think that anymore. I think what they do is reinvent things. They will get something that's already been invented and study it until they thoroughly understand it. In some cases, they understand it better than the original inventor.

  Steve Jobs

  Thinking, Japan, People

  "Playboy Interview: Steve Jobs". Interview With David Sheff, reprints.longform.org. February 1985.

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• Optimistic people play a disproportionate role in shaping our lives. Their decisions make a difference; they are inventors, entrepreneurs, political and military leaders - not average people. They got to where they are by seeking challenges and taking risks.

  Daniel Kahneman

  Military, Optimistic, Average

  "Bias, Blindness and How We Truly Think (Part 1): Daniel Kahneman". www.bloomberg.com. October 25, 2011.

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• I don't mind being, in the public context, referred to as the inventor of the World Wide Web. What I like is that image to be separate from private life, because celebrity damages private life.

  Tim Berners-Lee

  Mind, World, Damage

  "Interview with the Web’s Creator". Interview With Chris Oakes, www.wired.com. October 23, 1999.

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• We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

  Andre Maurois

  Love, Happiness, Two

  "The Silence of Colonel Bramble". Book by Andre Maurois, 1918.

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• Don't let the secret recipe die with the inventor.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Secret, Recipes, Dies

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• It's very hard for individual inventors to get paid. For the same reason that private equity is valuable - broadly, that's a good thing - in the case of patents, many that own them aren't in a good position to take the next step.

  Nathan Myhrvold

  Next, Steps, Patents

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• We all dream things into being; you imagine yourself having a child, and then you have a child. An inventor will think of something in his mind and then make it actual. So things are often passing from the imagined realm into the real world.

  Salman Rushdie

  Dream, Children, Real

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• Man shouldn’t be able to see his own face – there’s nothing more sinister. Nature gave him the gift of not being able to see it, and of not being able to stare into his own eyes. Only in the water of rivers and ponds could he look at his face. And the very posture he had to assume was symbolic. He had to bend over, stoop down, to commit the ignominy of beholding himself. The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Heart, Eye, Men

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• Some sad news from Australia... the inventor of the boomerang grenade died today.

  Johnny Carson

  Funny, Australia, News

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• At the bidding of a Peter the Hermit millions of men hurled themselves against the East; the words of an hallucinated enthusiast such as Mahomet created a force capable of triumphing over the Graeco-Roman world; an obscure monk like Luther bathed Europe in blood. The voice of a Galileo or a Newton will never have the least echo among the masses. The inventors of genius hasten the march of civilization. The fanatics and the hallucinated create history.

  Gustave Le Bon

  Men, Civilization, Voice

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• Greater consumption due to increase in population and growth of income heightens scarcity and induces price run-ups. A higher price represents an opportunity that leads inventors and businesspeople to seek new ways to satisfy the shortages. Some fail, at cost to themselves. A few succeed, and the final result is that we end up better off than if the original shortage problems had never arisen. That is, we need our problems, though this does not imply that we should purposely create additional problems for ourselves.

  Julian Simon

  Running, Opportunity, Growth

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• My dad was an inventor, and I think I've always had a rosy view of technology, or at least its potential.

  Scott McCloud

  Dad, Technology, Thinking

  Interview with Tasha Robinson, www.avclub.com. August 23, 2000.

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

  Eli Whitney

  Invention, Valuable, Worthless

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• An inventor is someone who makes another man rich.

  David Sarnoff

  Men, Rich, Another Man

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• Few have heard of Fra Luca Pacioli, the inventor of double-entry bookkeeping; but he has probably had much more influence on human life than has Dante or Michelangelo.

  Herbert J. Muller

  Influence, Human Life, Heard

  Uses of the Past ch. 8 (1957)

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• The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Music, Men, Mediocrity

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1993). “Self-reliance, and Other Essays”, p.114, Courier Corporation

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• There's a radical - and wonderful - new idea here... that all children could and should be inventors of their own theories, critics of other people's ideas, analyzers of evidence, and makers of their own personal marks on the world. Its an idea with revolutionary implications. If we take it seriously.

  Deborah Meier

  Children, Ideas, People

  Deborah Meier (2002). “The Power of Their Ideas: Lessons for America from a Small School in Harlem”, p.4, Beacon Press

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• What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

  Bertrand Piccard

  Inspire, Aviation, Should

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• The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.

  Ayn Rand

  Artist, Men, Fountainhead

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

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