Invention Quotes - Page 37

• Invention is nothing more than a fine deviation from, or enlargement on a fine model . . .

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Enlargement, Deviation, Fine

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• The majority of America's colossal fortunes have been made by entering industries in their early stages and developing leadership in them.... Think of what opportunities the present and the future contain in such fields as ship-building and ship-owning, aircraft, electrical development, the oil industry, different branches of the automotive industry, foreign trade, international banking, invention, the chemical industry, moving pictures, color photography, and, one night add, labor leadership.

  B. C. Forbes

  Photography, Moving, Thinking

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• Think for a moment of the great agents and engines of our civilization, and then think what shadowy ideas they all once were. The wheels of the steamship turned as swiftly as they do now, but as silent and unsubstantial as the motions of the inventor's thought; and in the noiseless loom of his meditation were woven the sinews of the printing-press, whose thunder shakes the world.

  Edwin Hubbel Chapin

  Thinking, Civilization, Ideas

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• Only well-written works will descend to posterity. Fulness of knowledge, interesting facts, even useful inventions, are no pledge of immortality, for they may be employed by more skilful hands; they are outside the man; the style is the man himself.

  Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon

  Men, Hands, Interesting

  Discours sur le Style (1753)

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• Discoveries are always accidental; and the great use of science is by investigating the nature of the effects produced by any process or contrivance, and of the causes by which they are brought about, to explain the operation and determine the precise value of every new invention. This fixes as it were the latitude and longitude of each discovery, and enables us to place it in that part of the map of human knowledge which it ought to occupy. It likewise enables us to use it in taking bearings and distances, and in shaping our course when we go in search of new discoveries.

  Benjamin Thompson

  Distance, Discovery, Use

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• Without theory, practice is but routine born of habit. Theory alone can bring forth and develop the spirit of inventions.

  Louis Pasteur

  Practice, Routine, Spirit

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• Electric telegraphs, printing, gas,
  Tobacco, balloons, and steam,
  Are little events that have come to pass
  Since the days of the old regime.
  And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page,
  I'd give--though it might seem bold--
  A hundred years of the Golden Age
  For a year of the Age of Gold.

  Henry Sambrooke Leigh

  Years, Giving, Age

  Henry Sambrooke Leigh (1869). “Carols of Cockayne”, p.28

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• Invention despoils observations, insinuation invalidates memory. A stewpot of bad habits, all of it - so that imaginative writers wind up, by and large, a shifty crew, sunk in distortion, misrepresentation, illusion, imposture, fakery.

  Cynthia Ozick

  Memories, Wind, Illusion

  Cynthia Ozick (1996). “Portrait of the Artist as a Bad Character: And Other Essays on Writing”

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• All that is necessary, as it seems to me, to convince any reasonable person that the Bible is simply and purely of human invention - of barbarian invention - is to read it. Read it as you would any other book; think of it as you would of any other; get the bandage of reverence from your eyes; drive from your heart the phantom of fear; push from the throne of your brain the cowled form of superstition - then read the Holy Bible, and you will be amazed that you ever, for one moment, supposed a being of infinite wisdom, goodness and purity, to be the author of such ignorance and of such atrocity.

  Robert Green Ingersoll

  Book, Eye, Heart

  Robert Green Ingersoll (1907). “The works of Robert G. Ingersoll”, p.15, Library of Alexandria

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• Because a garden mean constantly making choices, it offers almost limitless possibilities for surprise and satisfaction.

  Jane Garmey

  Creativity, Mean, Garden

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• The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics andtrade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Distance, Land, America

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• Logic is a wonderful invention. It is so wonderful, people often mistake it for reason. Reason, however, requires sense. Logic requires only consistency.

  Jane Haddam

  Mistake, People, Consistency

  Jane Haddam (2013). “Sweet, Savage Death”, p.164, Open Road Media

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• All rituals are paradoxical and dangerous enterprises, the traditional and improvised, the sacred and the secular. Paradoxical because rituals are conspicuously artificial and theatrical, yet designed to suggest the inevitability and absolute truth of their messages. Dangerous because when we are not convinced by a ritual we may become aware of ourselves as having made them up, thence on the paralyzing realization that we have made up all our truths; our ceremonies, our most precious conceptions and convictions - all are mere inventions.

  Barbara Myerhoff

  Realization, May, Sacred

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• For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal.

  Kenneth Keniston

  Education, Children, Mean

  Kenneth Keniston (1977). “All Our Children: The American Family Under Pressure”, Harcourt on Demand

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• The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Doe, Inventor, Knows

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1971). “The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson: Society and solitude”, p.146, Harvard University Press

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• They [twin beds] are the most stupid, the most perfidious, and the most dangerous invention in the world. Shame and a curse on who thought of them.

  Honore de Balzac

  Stupid, Bed, World

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• Our problem with limited resources is not primarily overpopulation; it is greed. Our problem with pollution is not the invention of fluorocarbons or mass transport; it is irresponsibility. The loss of an acre of forest every second, the mass slaughter of elephants for their ivory, the extinction of entire species of plants, insects and animals all over the world is not something that "just happens" because there are more of us human beings. It happens because the race of ruling beings put in charge has almost wholly lost its sense of stewardship. We have turned away from God.

  Winkie Pratney

  Loss, Animal, Race

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• It may be that the invention of the aeroplane flying-machine will be deemed to have been of less material value to the world than the discovery of Bessemer and open-hearth steel, or the perfection of the telegraph, or the introduction of new and more scientific methods in the management of our great industrial works. To us, however, the conquest of the air, to use a hackneyed phrase, is a technical triumph so dramatic and so amazing that it overshadows in importance every feat that the inventor has accomplished.

  Waldemar Kaempffert

  Air, Discovery, Perfection

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• The phrase, 'Emancipation of Women' is only an invention of the Jewish intellect and its content is stamped with the same spirit. In the really good periods of German life the German woman never needed to emancipate herself.

  Adolf Hitler

  Phrases, Spirit, Periods

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• I believe that life-saving, essential drugs should be freely available and the innovator should be paid a suitable royalty payment for his invention.

  Yusuf Hamied

  Believe, Drug, Essentials

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• We should think about whether canonizations, which are an invention of the Middle Ages, still make sense today.

  Hans Kung

  Thinking, Age, Today

  "'I Don't Cling to This Life'". Interview with Markus Grill, www.spiegel.de. December 12, 2013.

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• What's interesting about writing is the invention, the creative thing. Writing about myself is a yawn.

  Toni Morrison

  Writing, Interesting, Creative

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• I really want to go into the future 500 years and be a quantum physicist. Not only would I get to see all the incredible inventions I know will be out there, but I'd be able to understand the science behind them!

  Caroline Leavitt

  Years, Want, Able

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• The nineteenth century was the last moment in history when a relatively educated layperson could follow what was going on in the world of science and invention to a wide degree. Also, there were no "professionals". This was a time when amateur explorers, naturalists and enthusiasts were are still making major contributions to progress.

  Elizabeth Gilbert

  Progress, Degrees, World

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• She [my mother] said, "You are fiercely protective of your inventions because you are your fans." She helped me understand my own feelings. When someone has pulled the wool over my eyes, I feel that they have pulled the wool over the eyes of millions of fans around the world. She helped me to forgive. You can't force people to have the same world consciousness and awareness as you do.

  Lady Gaga

  Mom, Eye, People

  "Lady Gaga On Love and Lies". Harper’s Bazaar Interview, www.harpersbazaar.com. February 5, 2014.

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