Invention Quotes - Page 38

• Even in an intensely mediated world, in a world that offers at least the illusion of radical self-invention and radical freedom of choice, I as a novelist am drawn to the things you can't get away from. Because much of the promise of radical self-invention, of defining yourself through this marvelous freedom of choice, it's just a lie. It's a lie that we all buy into, because it helps the economy run.

  Jonathan Franzen

  Running, Lying, Self

  Interview with Gregg LaGambina, www.avclub.com. September 1, 2010.

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• What I saw quite clearly in the '80s, before the internet, was that the whole world was shifting toward digital formats, and that didn't matter whether it's movies or writing or whatever. It was something that was coming. And with the invention of the World Wide Web in the early '90s, when we were teaching our first courses, or the arrival of the internet by way of the browser, which opened up the internet to everybody - soon it was just revolutionary.

  Robert Coover

  Teaching, Writing, Matter

  Interview with Aaron Shulman, believermag.com. July 1, 2015.

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• Science is the engine of prosperity. All the prosperity we see around us is a byproduct of scientific inventions. And that's not being made clear to young people. If we can't make it clear to young people they're not going to go into science. And science will suffer in the United States.

  Michio Kaku

  People, Suffering, Prosperity

  "Michio Kaku and The Physics of the Future". Interview with Clayton Stearns, scriptphd.com. April 26, 2011.

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• I like it when you reach into a vending machine to grab your candy bar, and that flap goes up to block you from reaching up? That's a good invention. Before that, it was hard times for the vending machine owners. "Yeah, what candy bar are you getting?" "That one, and every one on the bottom row!"

  Mitch Hedberg

  Funny, Block, Humor

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• I think crossing into the digital age is the big move for the industry. I think it will be the biggest thing that's happened while I've been making movies. I equate it to the invention of color or sound, and I don't see any other major technical process coming along and changing that.

  George Lucas

  Moving, Thinking, Color

  "Cinematic Phenomenon". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. June 19, 1999.

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• I didn't study writing in school, I studied biology as an undergraduate and graduate student. So I think that I write fiction in the scientific way. I love invention, obviously; I love creation of character. But I do feel very rooted in the real world, even in the way that I create characters.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Real, Writing, School

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• I'm a raging leftist political activist. I've never had a spiritual thought in my life related to God. I'm clear that that's a human invention.

  Patch Adams

  Spiritual, Political, Rage

  Source: www.natureandhealth.com.au

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• I'm never going to have to work. None of my descendants are ever going to have to work; this is going to make me so much money. It was such a letdown when I realized that wasn't my invention.

  Chuck Palahniuk

  Letdowns, I Realized, Descendants

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• The source of innovation is freedom. All we have - new knowledge, invention - comes from freedom. Discoveries and new knowledge come from freedom. When somebody is responsible only to himself, [has] only himself to satisfy, then you'll have invention, new thought, now product, new design, new ideas.

  W. Edwards Deming

  Discovery, Ideas, Design

  Source: www.leanblog.org

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• Any actor, any playwright who's worked a life in the theater knows how to do things cheaply and quickly. It's just all by necessity. Invention is everything.

  Israel Horovitz

  Actors, Theater, Playwright

  Source: blogs.indiewire.com

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• Bush explained his fundamental concept to me, that freedom is not an American invention, but rather a gift from God to all people.

  Natan Sharansky

  People, Fundamentals, Gift From God

  Source: www.spiegel.de

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• I saw money becoming more and more important everywhere. It's one of the most abstract and important inventions by human beings. At the same time, money is capable of extraordinary corruption in every kind of relationship. I tried to see how and why, more and more, money is becoming a religion.

  Costa-Gavras

  Important, Saws, Becoming

  Source: progressive.org

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• In my heart I believe that biology is the beginning and the end of everything. It's the biggest source of ideas, the biggest source of invention. Nobody can invent better than nature and so if you like nature is my biggest source of inspiration.

  Ken Yeang

  Nature, Believe, Inspiration

  Source: www.cnn.com

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• What a dead thing is a clock, with its ponderous embowelments of lead and brass, its pert or solemn dullness of communication, compared with the simple altar-like structure and silent heart-language of the old sundials! It stood as the garden god of Christian gardens. Why is it almost everywhere vanished? If its business-use be superseded by more elaborate inventions, its moral uses, its beauty, might have pleaded for its continuance.

  Charles Lamb

  Christian, Business, Communication

  Charles Lamb (1943). “A complete Elia: The essays of Elia, together with The last essays of Elia”

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• The rich countries are rich because of their practices at home, and because of their readiness to adopt and adapt new things, such as Chinese inventions or New World crops.

  Ibn Warraq

  Country, Home, Rich Countries

  Ibn Warraq (2013). “Why the West is Best: A Muslim Apostate's Defense of Liberal Democracy”, p.71, Encounter Books

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• Every day we hear about a new invention here and there and they are reducing considerably their consumption of oil. But the day they use hydrogen for transportation, this is the day that oil disappears.

  Ahmed Zaki Yamani

  Oil, Here And There, Use

  Source: www.sbs.com.au

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• Being able to check your balance on the phone is the best invention ever.

  Lemar

  Phones, Balance, Able

  Source: www.telegraph.co.uk

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• Another argument of hope may be drawn from this-that some of the inventions already known are such as before they were discovered it could hardly have entered any man's head to think of; they would have been simply set aside as impossible. For in conjecturing what may be men set before them the example of what has been, and divine of the new with an imagination preoccupied and colored by the old; which way of forming opinions is very fallacious, for streams that are drawn from the springheads of nature do not always run in the old channels.

  Francis Bacon

  Running, Men, Thinking

  Francis Bacon, Rose-Mary Sargent (1999). “Selected Philosophical Works”, p.134, Hackett Publishing

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• Computers and rocket ships are examples of invention, not of understanding. ... All that is needed to build machines is the knowledge that when one thing happens, another thing happens as a result. It's an accumulation of simple patterns. A dog can learn patterns. There is no "why&rdqo"; in those examples. We don't understand why electricity travels. We don't know why light travels at a constant speed forever. All we can do is observe and record patterns.

  Scott Adams

  Dog, Knowledge, Science

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• Great minds don't think alike. If they did, the Patent Office would only have about fifty inventions.

  Scott Adams

  Science, Thinking, Office

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• But I hate things all fiction... there should always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric - and pure invention is but the talent of a liar.

  Lord Byron

  Liars, Hate, Writing

  Letter to John Murray from Venice, April 2 1817, in L. A. Marchand (ed.) 'Byron's Letters and Journals' vol. 5 (1976)

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• Chess problems demand from the composer the same virtues that characterize all worthwhile art: originality, invention, conciseness, harmony, complexity, and splendid insincerity

  Vladimir Nabokov

  Art, Demand, Chess

  Vladimir Nabokov (2015). “Letters to V??ra”, p.531, Knopf

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• The most amazing and effective inventions are not those which do most honour to the human genius.

  Voltaire

  Genius, Most Amazing, Honour

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• To be true to its constitutional role, the Supreme Court should refuse to be drawn into making public policy, and it should strike down legislation only when a clear constitutional violation exists. When judicial activists resort to various inventions and theories to impose their personal views on privacy and liberty, they jeopardize the legitimacy of the judiciary as an institution and undermine the role of the other branches of government.

  Mark Levin

  Government, Views, Liberty

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• The United States as we know it today is largely the result of mechanical inventions, and in particular of agricultural machinery and the railroad. One transformed millions of acres of uncultivated land into fertile farms, while the other furnished the transportation which carried the crops to distant markets.

  John Moody

  Land, Acres, Today

  John Moody (2013). “The Railroad Builders (Volume 38 Chronicles of America)”, CreateSpace

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