Invention Quotes - Page 2

• Before they invented drawing boards, what did they go back to?

  George Carlin

  Drawing, Boards, Hmmm

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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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• Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

  J. K. Rowling

  Inspirational, Imagination, Innovation

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• Faith is a fine invention When gentlemen can see, But microscopes are prudent In an emergency.

  Emily Dickinson

  Faith, Knowledge, Science

  c.1860 Complete Poems, no.185 (first published 1891).

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• Give me but a firm spot on which to stand, and I shall move the earth.

  Archimedes

  Graduation, Determination, Moving

  Quoted in Pappus, Synagoge

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• An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed.

  Edwin Land

  Business, Acceptance, Science

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• If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run-and often in the short one-the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Running, Science, Discovery

  Arthur C. Clarke (1968). “the Promise of Space”

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• Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley

  Ideas, Capacity, Capability

  Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (2007). “Frankenstein, Or, the Modern Prometheus [1818 Text]: Easyread Comfort Edition”, p.342, ReadHowYouWant.com

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• It is a fraud of the Christian system to call the sciences human invention; it is only the application of them that is human.

  Thomas Paine

  Christian, Science, Fraud

  1794 TheAge of Reason, pt.1.

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• The stomach is the teacher of the arts and the dispenser of invention.

  Aulus Persius Flaccus

  Teacher, Art, Stomach

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• It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

  John Stuart Mill

  Technology, Toil, Made

  John Stuart Mill, Jonathan Riley (1998). “Principles of Political Economy: And Chapters on Socialism”, p.129, Oxford University Press, USA

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• O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

  William Shakespeare

  Fire, Heaven, Muse

  'Henry V' (1599) chorus, l. 1

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• Invention strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come from nothing.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Memories, Creativity, Innovation

  sir Joshua Reynolds (1853). “Discourses on the Fine Arts Delivered to the Students of the Royal Academy”, p.7

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• Invention is the mother of necessity.

  Thorstein Veblen

  Mother, Favourite

  Thorstein Veblen (1994). “Absentee Ownership: Business Enterprise in Recent Times : the Case of America”, p.63, Transaction Publishers

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• War is an invention of the human mind. The human mind can invent peace with justice.

  Norman Cousins

  Peace, War, Ubuntu

  Norman Cousins (1963). “The New Realities The First Richard Joshua Reynolds Lecture at Emory and Henry College, Emory, Virginia, Nov. 19, 1963”

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• Painting is neither decorative amusement, nor the plastic invention of felt reality; it must be every time: invention, discovery, revelation.

  Max Ernst

  Reality, Discovery, Amusement

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• The bulldozer and not the atomic bomb may turn out to be the most destructive invention of the 20th century.

  Philip Shabecoff

  Nature, Environmental, Bombs

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• The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

  Henry George

  Philosophy, Imagination, Political

  Louis Freeland Post, Henry George (1899). “The Single Tax: An Explanation, with Colored Charts and Illustrated Notes of the Land, Labor, and Fiscal Reform Advocated by Henry George”

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• It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Thinking, Annoying, Epigrams

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• The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

  Henri Matisse

  Writing, Use, Would Be

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• I think as an artist you have to reinvent yourself every day.

  Damien Hirst

  Artist, Thinking, Reinventing Yourself

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• My portraits are half what I see and the other half is invented or dictated by the person and the painting.

  Francesco Clemente

  Portraits, Half, Painting

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• The way good inventions are made is to familiarize yourself with those of others. The men who cultivate letters and the arts are all sons of Homer.

  Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres

  Art, Son, Men

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• The invention of photography destroyed the canons of representational, imitative art.

  Laszlo Moholy-Nagy

  Photography, Art, Canon

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• All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.

  Jared Diamond

  Improvement, Made, Inventor

  Jared Diamond (2017). “Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies”, p.214, W. W. Norton & Company

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