Inventor Quotes - Page 7

• The Romans were not inventors of the supporting arch, but its extended use in vaults and intersecting barrel shapes and domes is theirs.

  Harry Seidler

  Bottom Of The Barrel, Use, Arches

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• Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Thinking, Civilization, Ideas

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• You cannot show real respect to your parents by perpetuating their errors.... Do you consider that the inventor of a steel plow cast a slur upon his father who scratched the ground with a wooden one? I do not consider that an invention by the son is a slander upon the father; I regard each invention simply as an improvement; and every father should be exceedingly proud of an ingenious son. If Mr. Talmage has a son, it will be impossible for him to honor his father except by differing with him.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Real, Father, Son

  Joseph Lewis, Robert Green Ingersoll (1957). “Ingersoll the Magnificent: To which Has Been Added a Special Arrangement of Some Gems from Ingersoll for Inspiration, Wisdom, and Courage”

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• The gods, the immortals, were the inventors of death and corruption; yet with one or two notable exceptions they have lacked the courage to try their invention out on themselves.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Two, Trying, Notable

  "Elizabeth Costello". Book by J. M. Coetzee, 2003.

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• Our society loves to romanticize the idea of the single, solo inventor who, working late in the lab one night, makes an earthshaking discovery, and voila, overnight everything's changed. That's a very appealing picture; however, it's just not true. Medicine today is a team sport.

  Nguyen Quyen

  Sports, Team, Night

  6 Copy quote

• Painting, like poetry, selects in the universe whatever she deems most appropriate to her ends. She assembles in a single fantastic personage, circumstances and features which nature distributes among many individuals. From this combination, ingeniously composed, results that happy imitation by virtue of which the artist earns the title of inventor and not of servile copyist.

  Francisco Goya

  Art, Titles, Painting

  50 Copy quote

• My experience is that inventors come in all sizes, all nationalities, all ages. The only thing I'm sure of is that inventors are always stubborn.

  Robert Dilts

  Being Different, Age, Stubborn

  Robert Dilts, Todd Epstein, Robert W. Dilts (1991). “Tools for dreamers: strategies for creativity and the structure of innovation”, Meta Pubns

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• The creator gives no heed to the critic unless he becomes a barren inventor.

  Khalil Gibran

  Giving, Barren, Critics

  "Spiritual Sayings of Kahlil Gibran". Book by Kahlil Gibran, translated by Anthony R. Ferris, 1962.

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• I owe all my knowledge to the German inventor, Johannes Gutenberg!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Knowledge, Science, Gutenberg

  63 Copy quote

• Transformation of any kind always exacts a holy tussle. The newborn butterfly struggles to open its wings so it can conjure up the strength to fly. So, too, with artists, inventors, mystics, and entrepreneurs.

  Tama J. Kieves

  Strong, Struggle, Butterfly

  Tama J. Kieves (2004). “This Time I Dance!: Trusting the Journey of Creating the Work You Love”, Tarcher

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• Da Vinci was as great a mechanic and inventor as were Newton and his friends. Yet a glance at his notebooks shows us that what fascinated him about nature was its variety, its infinite adaptability, the fitness and the individuality of all its parts. By contrast what made astronomy a pleasure to Newton was its unity, its singleness, its model of a nature in which the diversified parts were mere disguises for the same blank atoms.

  Jacob Bronowski

  Notebook, Nature, Science

  Jacob Bronowski (2011). “The Common Sense of Science”, p.16, Faber & Faber

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• Inventors and geniuses have almost always been looked on as no better than fools at the beginning of their career, and very frequently at the end of it also.

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Careers, History, Genius

  "The Idiot". Book by Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1868 - 1869.

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• Here was a torture that Greek inventors of the Feast and the Stone had omitted from their Hades: the Blanket of Self-Deception. A lovely warm blanket as far as it covered the soul in torment, but it never quite covered everything.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Self, Greek, Soul

  Jonathan Franzen (2001). “The Corrections: A Novel”, p.312, Macmillan

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• Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple

  Gene Wilder

  Funny, Humorous, Directors

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• I know of a wild region whose librarians repudiate the vain superstitious custom of seeking any sense in books and compare it to looking for meaning in dreams or in the chaotic lines of one's hands . . . They admit that the inventors of writing imitated the twenty-five natural symbols, but they maintain that this application is accidental and that books in themselves mean nothing. This opinion - we shall see - is not altogether false.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Dream, Book, Writing

  Jorge Luis Borges (1962). “Ficciones”, p.81, Grove Press

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• The inventor of the mirror poisoned the human heart.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Heart, Mirrors, Book Of Disquiet

  Fernando Pessoa (1996). “The Book of Disquietude: By Bernardo Soares, Assistant Bookkeeper in the City of Lisbon”

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• Which was why, some six hours later, Alexia Maccon's daughter was born inside the head of an octomaton in the presence of her husband, a comatose werewolf dandy, and a French inventor.

  Gail Carriger

  Daughter, Husband, Six

  Gail Carriger (2011). “Heartless: Book 4 of The Parasol Protectorate”, p.221, Hachette UK

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• Time is the best appraiser of scientific work, and I am aware that an industrial discovery rarely produces all its fruit in the hands of its first inventor.

  Louis Pasteur

  Discovery, Hands, Fruit

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• listen to me as one listens to the rain, the years go by, the moments return, do you hear the footsteps in the next room? not here, not there: you hear them in another time that is now, listen to the footsteps of time, inventor of places with no weight, nowhere, listen to the rain running over the terrace, the night is now more night in the grove, lightning has nestled among the leaves, a restless garden adrift-go in, your shadow covers this page.

  Octavio Paz

  Running, Rain, Night

  Octavio Paz, “As One Listens To The Rain”

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• I hope you're as lucky as I am. The world needs inventors--great ones. You can be one. If you love what you do and are willing to do what it really takes, it's within your reach. And it'll be worth every minute you spend alone at night, thinking and thinking about what it is you want to design or build. It'll be worth it, I promise.

  Steve Wozniak

  Motivational, Night, Thinking

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• Yet I also suspected that what I was seeing was but a part of the truth and perhaps not even the most important part; beneath these faces, these clothes, accents, rudenesses, was power and sorrow, both unadmitted, unrealized, the power of inventors, the sorrow of the disconnected.

  James A. Baldwin

  Clothes, Sorrow, Important

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• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

  Alan Kay

  Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

  Walter Isaacson (2011). “Steve Jobs”, p.95, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm an inventor. I became interested in long-term trends because an invention has to make sense in the world in which it is finished, not the world in which it is started.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Long, World, Trends

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• I'm not an inventor. I just want to make things better.

  Daniel Ek

  Want

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• Every child has a dream, to pursue the dream is in every child's hand to make it a reality. One's invention is another's tool.

  Samuel Morse

  Dream, Children, Reality

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