Invention Quotes - Page 34

• Invention, using the term most broadly, and imitation, are the two legs, so to call them, on which the human race historically has walked.

  William James

  Race, Two, Legs

  William James (1983). “Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals”, p.39, Harvard University Press

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• Men who expect universal peace through invention of destructive weapons of war are no wiser than one who, noting the improvement of agricultural implements, should prophesy an end to the tilling of the soil.

  Ambrose Bierce

  War, Men, Weapons

  Ambrose Bierce (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ambrose Bierce (Illustrated)”, p.2696, Delphi Classics

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• Ceremony is an invention to take off the uneasy feeling which we derive from knowing ourselves to be less the object of love and esteem with a fellow-creature than some other person is. It endeavours to make up, by superior attentions in little points, for that invidious preference which it is forced to deny in the greater.

  Charles Lamb

  Knowing, Feelings, Attention

  'Essays of Elia' (1823) 'A Bachelor's Complaint of the Behaviour of Married People'

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• Socrates isguilty of corrupting the minds of the young, and of believing indeities of his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state.

  Plato

  Believe, Mind, Young

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• There is then no analogy whatever between the operations of the Chess-Player, and those of the calculating machine of Mr. Babbage , and if we choose to call the former a pure machine we must be prepared to admit that it is, beyond all comparison, the most wonderful of the inventions of mankind.

  Edgar Allan Poe

  Player, Analogies, Chess

  Edgar Allan Poe (2016). “The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe”, p.838, Xist Publishing

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• In every human society of which we have any record, there are those who teach and those who learn, for learning a way of life is implicit in all human culture as we know it. But the separation of the teacher's role from the role of all adults who inducted the young into the habitual behavior of the group, was a comparatively late invention. Furthermore, when we do find explicit and defined teaching, in primitive societies we find it tied in with a sense of the rareness or the precariousness of some human tradition.

  Margaret Mead

  Teacher, Teaching, Adults

  "An Anthropologist Looks at the Teacher's Role". Educational Method, Vol 21, p. 219-223, 1942.

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• Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.

  Isaac Newton

  Mean, Analysis, Construction

  Isaac Newton (2008). “1691-1695”, p.261, Cambridge University Press

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• There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning. that it may silence, without convincing an antagonist, and requires the same intense study to make us sensible of its force, that was at first requisite for its invention. When we leave our closet, and engage in the common affairs of life, its conclusions seem to vanish, like the phantoms of the night on the appearance of the morning; and 'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction, which we had attain'd with difficulty.

  David Hume

  Morning, Night, Silence

  David Hume (2015). “A Treatise of Human Nature: Top Philosophy Collections”, p.339, 谷月社

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• Freedom is neither a legal invention nor a philosophical conquest, the cherished possession of civilizations more valid than others because they alone have been able to create or preserve it. It is the outcome of an objective relationship between the individual and the space he occupies, between the consumer and the resources at his disposal.

  Claude Levi-Strauss

  Philosophical, Civilization, Space

  Claude Levi-Strauss (2012). “Tristes Tropiques”, p.145, Penguin

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• We shall not read it for its sociological insights, which are non-existent, nor as science fiction, because it has a general air of implausibility; but there is one high poetic fancy in the New Atlantis that stays in the mind after all its fancies and inventions have been forgotten. In the New Atlantis, an island kingdom lying in very distant seas, the only commodity of external trade is light: Bacon's own special light, the light of understanding.

  Peter Medawar

  Lying, Sea, Islands

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• But art not only exploits the variety of appearances, it also affirms the validity of individual outlook and thereby admits a further dimension of variety. Since the shapes of art do not primarily bear witness to the objective nature of the things for which they stand, they can reflect individual interpretation and invention.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Art, Shapes, Bears

  Rudolf Arnheim (2004). “Visual Thinking”, p.300, Univ of California Press

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• Commonplace people have an answer for everything and nothing ever surprises them. They try to look as though they knew what you were about to say better than you did yourself, and when it is their turn to speak, they repeat with great assurance something that they have heard other people say, as though it were their own invention.

  Eugene Delacroix

  People, Trying, Looks

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix: A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, Cornell University Press, February 25, 1852 (p. 152), 1980.

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• They say that each generation inherits from those that have gone before; if this were so there would be no limit to man's improvements or to his power of reaching perfection. But he is very far from receiving intact that storehouse of knowledge which the centuries have piled up before him; he may perfect some inventions, but in others, he lags behind the originators, and a great many inventions have been lost entirely. What he gains on the one hand, he loses on the other.

  Eugene Delacroix

  Men, Hands, Perfect

  "The Journal of Eugene Delacroix : A Selection". Book edited by Hubert Wellington, translated by Lucy Norton, p. 256, 1980.

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• Many consider that Shostakovich is the greatest 20th-century composer. In his 15 symphonies, 15 quartets, and in other works he demonstrated mastery of the largest and most challenging forms with music of great emotional power and technical invention...All his works are marked by emotional extremes - tragic intensity, grotesque and bizarre wit, humour, parody, and savage sarcasm.

  Dmitri Shostakovich

  Sarcasm, Emotional, Symphony

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• We all know that a lie needs no other grounds, than the invention of the liar; and to take for granted as truth, all that is alleged against the fame of others, is a species of credulity, that men would blush at on any other subject.

  Jane Porter

  Liars, Lying, Men

  Sir Philip Sidney, Jane Porter (1807). “Aphorisms of Sir Philip Sidney: With Remarks”

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• I took a great deal of pleasure in it, and I still feel nostalgic about it. However, I felt that it had led me to live in a parallel world of pure invention, shut inside my solitude. Naturally, it was precisely for that purpose that it was made and that was why I took pleasure in it, but I wanted to regain body and roots.

  Jean Dubuffet

  Roots, Solitude, Purpose

  "Batons rompus". Book by Jean Dubuffet, pp. 34-35, 1986.

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• The formation of scales and of the web of harmony is a product of artistic invention, and is in no way given by the natural structure or by the natural behaviour of our hearing, as used to be generally maintained hitherto.

  Hermann von Helmholtz

  Behaviour, Way, Hearing

  "The Theory of Sound". Book by John William Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh, 1862.

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• A system needs to be alive and workable even when other people than the first enthusiasts start using it. Reinvention and revolution are enthusiast stuff. Invention and evolution are engineering.

  Erik Naggum

  Engineering, People, Needs

  "Well, I want to switch over to replace EMACS LISP with Guile". Usenet discussion groups, groups.google.com. September 28, 2002.

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• Even the simplest calculation in the purest mathematics can have terrible consequences. Without the invention of the infinitesimal calculus most of our technology would have been impossible. Should we say therefore that calculus is bad?

  Stanislaw Ulam

  Technology, Impossible, Mathematics

  "Adventures of a Mathematician" by Stanislaw Ulam, Third Edition, (p. 222), 1991.

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• No inspiration comes from nowhere. No invention is based on nothing. You always need to be tuned up and be ready to start receiving the energy you look for.

  Nikolay Semyonov

  Inspiration, Energy, Receiving

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• Every new discovery in science brings with it a host of new problems, just as the invention of the automobile brought with it gas stations, roads, garages, mechanics, and a thousand other subsidiary details.

  Banesh Hoffmann

  Discovery, Gas Stations, Details

  Banesh Hoffmann (1959). “The Strange Story of the Quantum: An Account for the General Reader of the Growth of the Ideas Underlying Our Present Atomic Knowledge”, p.4, Courier Corporation

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• Avant-garde theatre, with its distrust of the individual (that bourgeois invention), tends to go beyond [character] and the psychological approach in search of a syntax of types and characters which are "deconstructed and post-individual.

  Patrice Pavis

  Character, Theatre, Avant Garde

  Patrice Pavis, Christine Shantz (1998). “Dictionary of the Theatre: Terms, Concepts, and Analysis”, p.43, University of Toronto Press

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• Every invention eventually becomes obsolete.

  Mick Farren

  Obsolete

  Mick Farren (2010). “Darklost”, p.332, Macmillan

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• What is essential to understand at this point is that until now there was no such thing as mind and matter, subject and object, form and substance. Those divisions are just dialectical inventions that came later...They are just ghosts, immortal gods of the modern mythos which appear to us to be real because we are within that mythos. But in reality they are just as much an artistic creation as the anthropomorphic gods they replaced.

  Robert M. Pirsig

  Real, Mind, Essentials

  "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". Book by Robert M. Pirsig, 1974.

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• Not far from the invention of fire we must rank the invention of doubt.

  Thomas Huxley

  Fire, Doubt, Atheism

  "T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist, and Educator". Book by Cyril Bibby, p. 257, 1950.

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