Inventor Quotes - Page 12

• A . . . poet is a discoverer rather than an inventor.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Poet

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• I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

  Thomas A. Edison

  Atheism, Proud, Weapons

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• An inventor's path is chorused with groans, riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches.

  James Dyson

  Scratches, Fists, Path

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• It's as great a part of the human adventure to invent things as to understand them. John Randall wasn't a great scientist, but he was a great inventor. There's been lots more like him, and it's a shame they don't get Nobel Prizes.

  Freeman Dyson

  Adventure, Shame, Scientist

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• The PhD system is the real root of the evil of academic snobbery. People who have PhDs consider themselves a priesthood, and inventors generally don't have PhDs.

  Freeman Dyson

  Real, Roots, People

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• For artists, scientists, inventors, schoolchildren, and the rest of us, intrinsic motivation-the drive to do something because it is interesting, challenging, and absorbing-is essential for high levels of creativity.

  Daniel H. Pink

  Motivation, Creativity, Artist

  Daniel H. Pink (2011). “Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us”, p.45, Penguin

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• The best way to predict the future is to create it.

  Peter Drucker

  Inspirational, Life, Motivational

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• An inventor creates something that works. An entrepreneur creates something that others will buy.

  Chris Brogan

  Entrepreneur

  "Chris Brogan on building a valuable company". Interview with John Warrillow, www.theglobeandmail.com. November 15, 2010.

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• I was terrible at maths, but I could grasp science, and I used to love to read about the lives of the scientists. I wanted to be a scientist or an inventor.

  Francis Ford Coppola

  Math, Scientist, Used

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• Greed is the inventor of injustice as well as the current enforcer.

  Julian Casablancas

  Greed, Injustice, Currents

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• In the culture of America, in a free culture, you get what you celebrate. And in this culture, we have two obsessions, become a group that becomes a group that celebrates sports heroes and entertainment heroes. There's no room left for kids to see even a little bit of the opportunities to really, really get excited about becoming an inventor, an engineer, or a scientist, a problem solver.

  Dean Kamen

  Sports, Hero, Kids

  Big Think Interview, bigthink.com. June 9, 2009.

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• I remember mother saying   :    Inventors are like poets, a trashy lot

  Muriel Rukeyser

  Mother, Remember, Poet

  Muriel Rukeyser (1994). “Out of Silence: Selected Poems”, p.138, Northwestern University Press

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• I had studied Dadaism after the Second World War. What attracted me to this movement was the style its inventors used when not engaged in Dadaistic activities. It was clear, luminous, simple without being banal, precise without being narrow; it was a style adapted to the expression of thought as well as of emotion. I connected this style with the Dadaistic exercises themselves

  Paul Feyerabend

  War, Exercise, Simple

  Paul Feyerabend (1993). “Against Method”, p.265, Verso

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• The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.

  Alexander Graham Bell

  Men, Ideas, Looks

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• At the Egyptian city of Naucratis there was a famous old god whose name was Theuth; the bird which is called the Ibis was sacred to him, and he was the inventor of many arts, such as arithmetic and calculation and geometry and astronomy and draughts and dice, but his great discovery was the use of letters.

  Plato

  Art, Science, Discovery

  Plato (2010). “The Works of Plato: The Trial and Death of Socrates”, p.442, Cosimo, Inc.

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• I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.

  David Antin

  Thinking, Newton, James Watt

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• A new gadget that lasts only five minutes is worth more than an immortal work that bores everyone.

  Francis Picabia

  Work, Gadgets, Lasts

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• Man is/the symbol-using (symbol making, symbol-misusing) animal/inventor of the negative (or moralized by the negative)/separated from his natural condition by instruments of his own making/goaded by the spirit of hierarchy (or moved by the sense of order)/and rotten with perfection.

  Kenneth Burke

  Animal, Men, Order

  Kenneth Burke (1973). “Language as Symbolic Action: Essays on Life, Literature and Method”, p.16, Univ of California Press

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• When the inventor of the drawing board messed things up, what did he go back to?

  Bob Monkhouse

  Drawing, Boards

  "They're not laughing now". www.theguardian.com. December 29, 2003.

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• The great creators-the thinkers, the artists, the scientists, the inventors-stood alone against the men of their time.

  Ayn Rand

  Artist, Men, Fountainhead

  Ayn Rand (1999). “Ayn Rand Reader”, p.72, Penguin

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• Samuel F. B. Morse, inventor of the telegraph, said that whenever he could not see his way clearly, he knelt down and prayed for light and understanding.

  Nathan Eldon Tanner

  Technology, Light, Understanding

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• Nothing retains its form; new shapes from old. Nature, the great inventor, ceaselessly contrives. In all creation, be assured, there is no death - no death, but only change and innovation; what we men call birth is but a different new beginning; death is but to cease to be the same. Perhaps this may have moved to that, and that to this, yet still the sum of things remains the same.

  Ovid

  Death, New Beginnings, Men

  Ovid,, A. D. Melville, E. J. Kenney (2008). “Metamorphoses”, p.359, Oxford University Press

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• A composer is not only an architect but also an inventor, and he should not build houses in which he cannot live.

  Igor Stravinsky

  Inspiration, House, Architect

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• Prior to Valentinus, those who follow Valentinus had no existence. Nor did those from Marcion exist before Marcion. Nor, in short, did any of those malignant-minded people, whom I have listed above, have any existence previous to the initiators and inventors of their perversity.

  Irenaeus of Lyons

  Sarcastic, People, Existence

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• Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then [these?], any man might instantly use what another had invented; so that the inventor had no special advantage from his own invention. The patent system changed this; secured to the inventor, for a limited time, the exclusive use of his invention; and thereby added the fuel of interest to the fire of genius, in the discovery and production of new and useful things.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Country, Science, Men

  Second lecture on discoveries and inventions, delivered to the Phi Alpha Society of Illinois College at Jacksonville, Illinois, (February 11, 1859); "The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Vol. 3" edited by Roy P. Basler, (p. 357), 1953.

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