Tinkering Quotes - Page 2

• Congress is going to start tinkering with the Ten Commandments just as soon as they find someone in Washington who has read them.

  Will Rogers

  Congress, Ten Commandments, Ten

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• I'm always tinkering with something - suddenly I'll think I can work with wood, but then I'll realize I can't, so I go back to sewing.

  Melissa McCarthy

  Quilts, Thinking, Woods

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• If the land mechanism as a whole is good then every part is good, whether we understand it or not.

  Aldo Leopold

  Land, Cogs, Conservation

  Aldo Leopold (1972). “Round River”, p.108, Oxford University Press

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• At this young age I am already sold on the idea of the dog. One of God's absolutely greatest inventions and one that needs no more tinkering. The dog is the perfect beast, companion, friend, shoulder to lean on, and scapegoat when too many cookies are missing. And a dog won't hold that against you, either. I am at peace sitting in silence with a dog.

  Rick Springfield

  Dog, Ideas, Perfect

  Rick Springfield (2010). “Late, Late at Night”, p.45, Simon and Schuster

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• I'm sort of an old man, always tinkering in the backyard. Since I grew up playing outdoors, I still like to plant things, sit out on the deck, or go hiking.

  Josh Duhamel

  Men, Hiking, Backyards

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• Writing is very improvisational. It's like trying to fix a broken sewing machine with safety pins and rubber bands. A lot of tinkering.

  Margaret Atwood

  Writing, Safety Pins, Broken

  Margaret Atwood (2006). “Waltzing Again: New and Selected Conversations with Margaret Atwood”

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• We cannot restore traditional American freedom unless we limit the government's power to tax. No tinkering with this, that, or the other law will stop the trend toward socialism. We must repeal the Sixteenth Amendment.

  Frank Chodorov

  Government, Law, Liberty

  Frank Chodorov (2007). “Income Tax: Root of All Evil”, p.10, Ludwig von Mises Institute

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• Perhaps our originality manifests itself most strikingly in what we do with that which we did not originate. To discover something wholly new can be a matter of chance, of idle tinkering, or even of the chronic dissatisfaction of the untalented.

  Eric Hoffer

  Matter, Chance, Originality

  Eric Hoffer (1982). “Between the Devil and the Dragon: The Best Essays and Aphorisms of Eric Hoffer”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Basement?' Hamish cried, then glanced at his brother. 'You hear this fellow? He thinks we can just go on down to the furnace and start tinkering?' Angus laughed. 'He probably wouldn't care at all if the whole place went boom, he wouldn't.' At this the guard bristled and stood up even straighter. 'Now see here---' 'No, you see, my good man. Out here, see, we've got snow. So in there, I'd bet, you've got heat. And where there's heat there's gas; and where there's gas there's...' Angus trailed off while his brother said, 'boom.

  Ally Carter

  Brother, Men, Thinking

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• Keep my eyes fixed on You, Lord. Help me to stop tinkering and realize my total inability to change. I look to You to change me and give me victory as I focus on Your friendly eyes looking lovingly at me. Amen.

  Aiden Wilson Tozer

  Eye, Giving, Focus

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• By sending the contradictory message that the famous are just plain folks on Mount Olympus, America has forged a relentless tension between loftiness and accessibility. Stir in the fact that the inborn talent and intelligence needed to achieve fame are immune to distributive tinkering by government programs and you have a definition of fame certain to produce envious rage: somebody screwed democracy.

  Florence King

  Equality, America, Government

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• Starting early and getting girls on computers, tinkering and playing with technology, games and new tools, is extremely important for bridging the gender divide that exists now in computer science and in technology.

  Beth Simone Noveck

  Girl, Technology, Games

  "Beth Simone Noveck, Former U.S Deputy Chief Technology Officer, On The Tech Trends That Worry Her Most". Interview with Bianca Bosker, www.huffingtonpost.com. August 19, 2011.

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• Mastery in poetry consists largely in the instinct for not ruining or smothering or tinkering with moments of vision.

  Edmund Blunden

  Vision, Mastery, Moments

  Edmund Blunden (1930). “Leigh Hunt: a biography”, Archon Books

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• I got in the school band and the school choir. It all hit me like a ton of bricks, everything just came out. I played percussion for a while, and stayed after school forever just tinkering around with different things, the clarinets and the violins.

  Quincy Jones

  School, Forever, Different

  "Grammy Legend Award". The Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. October 28, 2000.

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• Every time my cameras go out on a movie, we learn something new and then we take what we learn and we put it into the next generation of the cameras so we're constantly improving. It's kind of like building a race car, racing it, then running back to the shop and working on the engine some more and tinkering with it to improve it.

  James Cameron

  Running, Race, Car

  "James Cameron Interview, Sanctum". MoviesOnline Interview, www.moviesonline.ca. February 2011.

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• I love writing stand-up so much and tinkering and looking for ideas.

  Jim Gaffigan

  Writing, Ideas

  Source: www.avclub.com

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• By all odds, earliest man, so naked to the elements and to deadly enemies, should have existed in a state of constant shock. We find him instead the only lighthearted being in a deadly serious universe.... He alone, with childish carelessness, tinkered and played, and exerted himself more in the pursuit of superfluities than of necessities. Yet the tinkering and playing, and the fascination with the nonessential, were a chief source of the inventiveness which enabled man to prevail over better-equipped and more-purposeful animals.

  Eric Hoffer

  Animal, Men, Odds

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• Devolving APD to Scotland is merely tinkering with it. We have to get shot of this hated tax right across the country to ensure all of our airports are competing on level terms.

  Brian Donohoe

  Country, Airports, Scotland

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• Had I to give advice to writers (and I do not think they need it, because everyone has to find out things for himself), I would tell them simply this; I would ask them to tamper as little as they can with their own work. I do not think tinkering does any good. The moment comes when one has found out what one can do - when one has found one's natural voice, one's rhythm. Then I do not think that slight emendations should prove useful.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Writing, Thinking, Voice

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• I think the federal Liberals' micro-tinkering is not causing any kind of upsurge in public confidence. The challenge for Conservatives is how to not get caught in the same web. I mean, the public just discounts what political people and parties say.

  Preston Manning

  Party, Mean, Thinking

  Source: www.macleans.ca

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• There is fascism, leading only into the blackness which it has chosen as its symbol, into smartness and yapping out of orders, and self-righteous brutality, into social as well as international war. It means change without hope. Our immediate duty - in that tinkering which is the only useful form of action in our leaky old tub - our immediate duty is to stop it.

  E. M. Forster

  War, Mean, Self

  "Notes on the Way". Time and Tide Magazine, June 10, 1934.

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• Because democratic institutions do not renew themselves as effortlessly as flowering trees, they demand the ceaseless tinkering of people who possess both the courage and the honesty to admit their mistakes and accept responsibility for even the most inglorious acts.

  Bill Vaughan

  Honesty, Mistake, Responsibility

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• It may seem strange that of all men sailors should be tinkering at their last wills and testaments, but there are no people in the world more fond of that diversion.

  Herman Melville

  Men, People, May

  1851 Moby Dick, ch.49.

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• I disagree with the followers of Marx and those of Adam Smith: the reason free markets work is because they allow people to be lucky, thanks to aggressive trial and error, not by giving rewards or "incentives" for skill.

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb

  Errors, Skills, People

  Nassim Nicholas Taleb (2010). “The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable Fragility"”, p.25, Random House

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• Have Liverpool done too much tinkering and tailoring with the system?

  Stan Collymore

  Done, Too Much, Liverpool

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