Invention Quotes - Page 32

• The single greatest invention man ever conceived in the dollar bill, because I don't want to know the conversion rate for coconuts.

  John Smith

  Men, Dollar Bills, Dollars

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• The vanishing point leads to the missiles of today, which can take us out of this world. It could be that the west's greatest mistakes were the 'invention' of the external vanishing point and the internal combustion engine.

  David Hockney

  Mistake, Perspective, World

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• Civilization has gotten further and further from the so-called 'natural' man, who uses all his faculties: perception, invention, improvisation.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Men, Civilization, Perception

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• There can be no doubt but that he who has the most materials has the greatest means of invention.

  Joshua Reynolds

  Mean, Doubt, Materials

  Sir Joshua Reynolds, Edmond Malone (1809). “The Works of Sir Joshua Reynolds”, p.159

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• A world in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment.

  Joyce Cary

  Art, Ideas, World

  Joyce Cary, Alan Bishop (1976). “Selected essays”, Michael Joseph

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• Never stop because you are afraid - you are never so likely to be wrong. Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention. The difficult is what takes a little time; the impossible is what takes a little longer.

  Fridtjof Nansen

  Lines, Littles, Retreat

  Quoted in Listener, 14 Dec. 1939 See Calonne 1; Santayana 14; Trollope 3

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• With an absurd oversimplification, the "invention" of calculus [method in mathematics] is sometimes ascribed to two men, Newton and Leibniz.

  Richard Courant

  Men, Two, Sometimes

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• One of the weaknesses of much abstract painting is the attempt to substitute the inventions of the intellect for a pristine imaginative conception. The inner life of a human being is a vast and varied realm and does not concern itself alone with stimulating arrangements of color, form and design. The term 'life' as used in art is something not to be held in contempt, for it applies all of its existence, and the province of art is to react to it and not to shun it. Painting will have to deal more fully and less obliquely with life and nature's phenomena before it can again be great.

  Edward Hopper

  Art, Color, Design

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• One of the great inventions of the twentieth century was the studied, methodical engineering of myth for political ends.

  Caryl Rivers

  Engineering, Political, Great Inventions

  Caryl Rivers (1991). “More joy than rage: crossing generations with the new feminism”, Univ Pr of New England

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• The greater opportunity enabled me to make important discoveries and inventions.

  Philip Emeagwali

  Opportunity, Discovery, Important

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• In my basic courses I have always tried to develop discovery and invention which, in my opinion, are the criteria of creativeness.

  Josef Albers

  Creativity, Discovery, Opinion

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• It is definitely mostly due to the invention of the camera that all this design and emphasized paint quality have come into painting.

  E. J. Hughes

  Photography, Design, Quality

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• Hope is a strange invention - A Patent of the Heart - In unremitting action Yet never wearing out

  Emily Dickinson

  Hope, Heart, Patents

  Emily Dickinson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Emily Dickinson (Illustrated)”, p.1672, Delphi Classics

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• There have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking.

  Will Rogers

  Wisdom, Fire, Politics

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• When man invented the bicycle he reached the peak of his attainments. Here was a machine of precision and balance for the convenience of man. And (unlike subsequent inventions for man's convenience) the more he used it, the fitter his body became. Here, for once, was a product of man's brain that was entirely beneficial to those who used it, and of no harm or irritation to others. Progress should have stopped when man invented the bicycle.

  Elizabeth West

  Philosophy, Healing, Men

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• During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Simple, Discovery, Years

  "Talks with Edison". Harper's Magazine, Volume 80, February 1890.

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• Invention requires both disciplines, strict common sense and wild imagination.

  Vanna Bonta

  Wild Imagination, Discipline, Common Sense

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• More than any other contemporary British playwright, Tom Stoppard populates his plays -- from Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead to The Invention of Love (his portrait of the poet and scholar A. E. Housman) -- with characters from life and literature. But one cannot always tell the difference between those who are real and those who are imaginary.

  Mel Gussow

  Real, Character, Play

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• Unpleasant, even dangerous, qualities can be found in every nation and every individual: it is cruel to demand that the Jew be an exception. In him, these qualities may even be dangerous and revolting to an unusual degree; and perhaps the young stock-exchange Jew is altogether the most disgusting invention of mankind.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Quality, Degrees, Demand

  Friedrich Nietzsche (1977). “The Portable Nietzsche”, p.46, Penguin

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• I think love is serious. It's like an invention: sometimes it lies deep down inside you, great and quiet--and at other times it racks you and keeps you from sleeping.

  William John Locke

  Lying, Sleep, Love Is

  William John Locke (2012). “Septimus”, p.91, tredition

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• In 1929 the discovery of the wonders of the geometric series struck Wall Street with a force comparable to the invention of the wheel.

  John Kenneth Galbraith

  Wall, Discovery, Wheels

  John Kenneth Galbraith (2009). “The Great Crash 1929”, p.76, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• Book burning is a charming old custom, hallowed by antiquity. It has been practiced for centuries by fascists, communists, atheists, school children, rival authors, and tired librarians. Like everything of importance since the invention of the cloak and the shroud, its origins are cloaked in mystery and shrouded in secrecy. Some scholars believe that the first instance of book burning occurred in the Middle Ages, when a monk was trying to illuminate a manuscript. All agree that book burning was almost non-existent during the period when books were made of stone.

  Richard Armour

  Atheist, Children, Believe

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• Nothing that Shakespeare ever invented was to equal Lincoln's invention of himself and, in the process, us.

  Gore Vidal

  Process, Equal

  Gore Vidal (1988). “At home: essays, 1982-1988”, Random House Inc

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• The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.

  Alfred North Whitehead

  Century, Nineteenth Century, Method

  Science and the ModernWorld ch. 6 (1925)

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• A long poem is a test of invention which I take to be the Polar star of poetry, as fancy is the sails, and imagination the rudder.

  John Keats

  Stars, Long, Imagination

  Letter to Benjamin Bailey, 8 October 1817, in H. E. Rollins (ed.) 'The Letters of John Keats' (1958) vol. 1, p. 170

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