Invention Quotes - Page 31

• So,high heels weren't a modern invention. I couldn't believe women had been putting up with these torture devices for centuries.

  Karen Chance

  Believe, High Heels, Modern

  Karen Chance (2011). “Cassie Palmer Novels 1-5”, p.339, Penguin

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• The alphabet was a great invention, which enabled men to store and to learn with little effort what others had learned the hard way-that is, to learn from books rather than from direct, possibly painful, contact with the real world.

  B. F. Skinner

  Real, Book, Men

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• Invention requires an excited mind; execution, a calm one.

  Johann Peter Eckermann

  Mind, Execution, Calm

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• An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.

  Peter Farb

  Successful, Culture, Elements

  Peter Farb (1968). “Man's rise to civilization as shown by the Indians of North America from primeval times to the coming of the industrial state”, Secker & Warburg

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• The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.

  Samuel George Morton

  Art, Strong, Littles

  Samuel George Morton, George Combe (1839). “Crania Americana; Or, A Comparative View of the Skulls of Various Aboriginal Nations of North and South America: To which is Prefixed an Essay on the Varieties of the Human Species”, p.88, Philadelphia : J. Dobson ; London : Simpkin, Marshall

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• I've never had plastic surgery, but if they made a new invention for making people taller, I'd be the first to have the surgery.

  Alanna Ubach

  People, New Inventions, Firsts

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• The capacity of human beings to bore one another seems to be vastly greater than that of any other animal. Some of their most esteemed inventions have no other apparent purpose - for example, the dinner party of more than two, the epic poem, and the science of metaphysics.

  H. L. Mencken

  Funny, Party, Humor

  H.L. Mencken (2013). “Minority Report”, p.68, Knopf

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• The endless cycle of idea and action, / Endless invention, endless experiment, / Brings knowledge of motion, but not of stillness; / Knowledge of speech, but not of silence; / Knowledge of words, and ignorance of The Word.

  T. S. Eliot

  Ignorance, Ideas, Silence

  T.S. Eliot (2011). “The Complete Poems and Plays of T. S. Eliot”, p.129, Faber & Faber

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• Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved.

  Ann Douglas

  Home, Environmental, Simple Living

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• The cell was the first invention of the animal kingdom, and all higher animals are and must be cellular in structure. Our tissues were formed ages on ages ago; they have all persisted. Most of our organs are as old as worms. All these are very old, older than the mountains.

  John M. Tyler

  Animal, Cells, Age

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• We had learned how to invent things, and the question of why we invent things receded in importance. The idea that if something could be done it should be done was born in the nineteenth century. And along with it, there developed a profound belief in all the principles through which invention succeeds: objectivity, efficiency, expertise, standardization, measurement, and progress. It also came to be believed that the engine of technological progress worked most efficiently when people are conceived of not as children of God or even as citizens but as consumers-that is to say, as markets.

  Neil Postman

  Children, Objectivity, Ideas

  Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.61, Vintage

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• In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Order, Ideas, Rivers

  "In the Air" by Malcolm Gladwell, www.newyorker.com. May 12, 2008.

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• GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.

  Ambrose Bierce

  Angel, Science, Agency

  Ambrose Bierce (2001). “The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary”, p.102, University of Georgia Press

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• Shall an invention be patented or donated to the public freely? I have known some well-meaning scientific men ... to look askance at the patenting of inventions, as if it were a rather selfish and ungracious act, essentially unworthy. The answer is very simple. Publish an invention freely, and it will almost surely die from lack of interest in its development. It will not be developed and the world will not be benefited. Patent it, and if valuable, it will be taken up and developed into a business.

  Elihu Thomson

  Selfish, Taken, Science

  "Elihu Thomas lays down principles for inventors" by Thomas, E., Electrical World 75, (p. 1505), 1920.

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• I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill. The dove is my emblem.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Technology, Thinking, Giving

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• The charm of the best courages is that they are inventions, inspirations, flashes of genius.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Courage, Inspiration, Genius

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.2507, Delphi Classics

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• God had infinite time to give us.... He cut it up into a near succession of new mornings, and, with each, therefore, a new idea, new inventions, and new applications.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Morning, Cutting, Ideas

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.4099, Delphi Classics

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• An exquisite invention this, Worthy of Love's most honeyed kiss,-- This art of writing billet-doux-- In buds, and odors, and bright hues! In saying all one feels and thinks In clever daffodils and pinks; In puns of tulips; and in phrases, Charming for their truth, of daisies.

  Leigh Hunt

  Art, Clever, Writing

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• His (the writer's) standard of fidelity to the truth should be so high that his invention, out of his experience, should produce a truer account than anything factual can be.

  Ernest Hemingway

  Fidelity, Should, Produce

  Ernest Hemingway, Patrick Hemingway (2012). “Hemingway on War”, p.24, Simon and Schuster

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• The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.

  Henri Matisse

  Peculiar, Harmony, Determine

  Henri Matisse, Jack D. Flam (1973). “Matisse on art”

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• One reproduces only that which is striking; that is to say, the necessary. Thus, one's recollections and inventions are liberated from the tyranny which nature exerts.

  Edgar Degas

  Tyranny, Recollection, Liberated

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• The most desirable mode of education, is that which is careful that all the acquisitions of the pupil shall be preceded and accompanied by desire . . . The boy, like the man, studies because he desires it. He proceeds upon a plan of is own invention, or by which, by adopting, he has made his own. Everything bespeaks independence and inequality.

  William Godwin

  Boys, Men, Independence

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• We must give as much weight to the arousal of the emotions and to the expression of moral and esthetic values as we now give to science, to invention, to practical organization. One without the other is impotent.

  Lewis Mumford

  Expression, Organization, Giving

  "Values for Survival". Essay by Lewis Mumford, 1946.

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• God invented man, and man invented the metric system.

  Salvador Dali

  Men, Metrics, Metric System

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• Necessity, oftener than facility, has been the mother of invention; and the most prolific school of all has been the school of difficulty.

  Samuel Smiles

  Mother, School, Difficulty

  Samuel Smiles (1859). “Self-help; with illustrations of character and conduct”, p.75

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