Inventor Quotes - Page 8

• Invention is activity of mind, as fire is air in motion; a sharpening of the spiritual sight, to discern hidden aptitudes.

  Martin Farquhar Tupper

  Spiritual, Fire, Sight

  Martin Farquhar Tupper (1839). “Proverbial philosophy: a book of thoughts and arguments”, p.216

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• I've been an amature inventor for a long time.

  Billy Sheehan

  Long, Long Time

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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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• Don't be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don't follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it's enough.

  Charles Kettering

  Ideas, Enough, Strikes

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• I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'

  Thomas A. Edison

  Motivational, Sponges

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• I consider myself an inventor, entrepreneur, and author.

  Ray Kurzweil

  Entrepreneur, Entrepreneurship

  "Singularity Chat with Vernor Vinge and Ray Kurzweil". Interview in an online chat room co-produced by Analog Science Fiction and Fact and Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine on Scifi.com, www.kurzweilai.net. June 11, 2002.

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• Most inventors and engineers I've met are like me. They're shy and they live in their heads. The very best of them are artists. And artists work best alone.

  Steve Wozniak

  Artist, Working Alone, Shy

  Steve Wozniak (2007). “iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon”, p.290, W. W. Norton & Company

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• I would consider myself an inventor at heart, or reinventor.

  Josie Maran

  Heart

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• That has always seemed to me one of the stranger aspects of literary fame: you prove your competence as a writer and an inventor of stories, and then people clamour for you to make speeches and tell them what you think about the world.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Thinking, People, Stories

  Interview with David Attwell, www.dn.se. December 8, 2003.

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

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Knowledge, Science, Gutenberg

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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

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

  Daniel Ek

  Want

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• 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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• The French revolution was a .eune invented and constructed for the purpose of manufacturing liberty; but it had neither lever cogs, nor adjusting powers, and the consequences were that it worked so rapidly that it destroyed its own inventors, and set itself on fire.

  Charles Caleb Colton

  Fire, Liberty, Cogs

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• Education, for most people, means trying to lead the child to resemble the typical adult of his society . . . but for me and no one else, education means making creators. . . . You have to make inventors, innovators...not conformists

  Jean Piaget

  Children, Mean, People

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• I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It's their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor

  Thomas A. Edison

  Names, Ideas, Trying

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• Never let an inventor run a company. You can never get him to stop tinkering and bring something to market

  E. F. Schumacher

  Running, Business, Tinkering

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• I maintain that to-day many an inventor, many a diplomat, many a financier is a sounder philosopher than all those who practise the dull craft of experimental psychology.

  Oswald Spengler

  Practice, Psychology, Crafts

  "The Decline of the West: Form and actuality".

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• In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

  Oscar Wilde

  Disappointment, Crazy, Exercise

  Oscar Wilde, Merlin Holland (2003). “Collins complete works of Oscar Wilde”, HarperCollins UK

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• 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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• 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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• We are in the position of the man who has only two ambitions in life. One is to invent the universal solvent which will dissolve any solid substance, and the second is to invent the universal container which will hold any liquid. Whatever this inventor does, he will be frustrated.

  Norbert Wiener

  Ambition, Men, Two

  Norbert Wiener (1988). “The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society”, p.129, Da Capo Press

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• These inventors were elevating the formulation of entrepreneurial ideas to the status of a visionary activity. Though forced to justify their efforts in the pragmatic language of venture capital, they were at heart utopian thinkers intent on transforming the world.

  Alain de Botton

  Heart, Ideas, Effort

  "The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work". Book by Alain de Botton, 2009.

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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'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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