Invention Quotes

People do tell a writer things that they don't tell others. I don't know why, unless it is that having read one or two of his books they feel on peculiarly intimate terms with him; or it may be that they dramatize themselves and, seeing themselves as it were as characters in a novel, are ready to be as open with him as they imagine the characters of his invention are.

The impact of television on our culture is. . . indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing.

Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

All our inventions have endowed material forces with intellectual life, and degraded human life into a material force.

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.

Money is only a human invention. I get paid for my work, it's a system of trade, but it's not my purpose and reason for living.

[A]ll churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Muslim, are simply human inventions. They use fear to enslave us. They are a monopoly for power and profit.

Money is only a human invention.

The sentence is the greatest human invention of civilization.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

The myths about Hades and the gods, though they are pure invention, help to make men virtuous.

Like in comedy, you know the names of the people who steal things that others work really hard on. It really sucks. And, in magic, it's not just the hard work of getting the words and attitude and point of view right; you're taking an actual invention, making something over three or four years, and somebody can just take it.

The first move toward the determination of the direction of my art was the fortunate invention of plans for Blok’s wonder The Puppet Show.

A nation has a fixed quantity of invention, and it will make itself felt.

Sleep was the greatest invention in the history of mankind. When I was sleeping, I wasn’t feeling guilty, or miserable, or sad.

Invention depends altogether upon execution or organization; as that is right or wrong so is the invention perfect or imperfect.

Progress comes by experiment, and this from ennui that leads to voyages, wars, revolutions, and plainly to change in the arts of expression; that cries out to the imagination, and is the nurse of the invention whereof we term necessity the mother.

From this haunting feeling of being not wanted, which remained a recurrent haunt through life, I found two ways of escape, both of which in changing form also persisted. One was the invention of gods, the other was personal efficiency in work.

It's really hard to design products by focus groups. A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them. As Henry Ford said many years earlier: "If I had listened to my customers, I would have built a faster horse." Inventions in general express Shannon entropy. They come from the supply side.

Most loverspicture to themselves, in their mistresses, a secret reality, beyond and different from what they see every day. They are in love with somebody else--their own invention. And sometimes there is a secret reality; and sometimes reality and appearance are the same. The discovery, in either case, is likely to cause a shock.

Our first and most pressing problem is how to do away with warfare as a method of solving conflicts between national groups or between groups within a society who have different views about how the society is to be run. If you look back, you will see that warfare was an invention, just as ways of handling government or taxes are inventions. You will see, too, that once people use an invention they go on using it until they find another which they think is superior.

The sign is determined at the moment I use it and for the object of which it must form a part. For this reason I cannot determine in advance signs which never change, and which would be like writing: that would paralyze the freedom of my invention.

The sign for which I forge an image has no value if it doesn't harmonize with other signs, which I must determine in the course of my invention and which are completely peculiar to it.

A man has a very insecure tenure of a property which another can carry away with his eyes. A few months reduced me to the cruel necessity either of destroying my machine, or of giving it to the public. To destroy it, I could not think of; to give up that for which I had laboured so long, was cruel. I had no patent, nor the means of purchasing one. In preference to destroying, I gave it to the public.

I'm not trying to give any definite answer. What I'm trying to prove is that we have enough gaps, enough discrepancies, enough simple falsifications to conclude that probably this history was an invention of a later time.

I think love is serious. It's like an invention: sometimes it lies deep down inside you, great and quiet--and at other times it racks you and keeps you from sleeping.

If necessity is the mother of invention, it's the father of cooperation. And we're cooperating like never before.

Truth is always consistent with itself, and needs nothing to help it out. It is always near at hand, and sits upon our lips, and is ready to drop out before we are aware; whereas a lie is troublesome, and sets a man's invention upon the rack; and one trick needs a great many more to make it good.

Intellectual Ventures is a company that invests in invention.

Invention requires both disciplines, strict common sense and wild imagination.

The fear of the never-ending onslaught of gizmos and gadgets is nothing new. The radio, the telephone, Facebook - each of these inventions changed the world. Each of them scared the heck out of an older generation. And each of them was invented by people who were in their 20s.

But words came halting forth, wanting Invention's stay; Invention, Nature's child, fled stepdame Study's blows; And others' feet still seemed but strangers in my way. Thus, great with child to speak, and helpless in my throes, Biting my truant pen, beating myself for spite: "Fool," said my Muse to me, "look in thy heart, and write.

An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.

I think the anti-smoking business is a yuppie invention-an extension of the concept that "we'll always be young, rich, and healthy.

Young people are fitter to invent than to judge; fitter for execution than for counsel; and more fit for new projects than for settled business.

A bad memory is the mother of invention.

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.

Learn of the green world what can be thy place In scaled invention or true artistry

The most revolutionary invention of the Nineteenth Century was the artificial sterilization of marriage.

Ever since the arrival of printing - thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people's minds - people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.

Dianetics is a milestone for man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his invention of the wheel and the arch.

Ten builders rear an arch, each in turn lifting it higher; but it is the tenth man, who drops in the keystone, who hears our huzzas.

The Bible must be the invention of either good men or angels, bad men or devils, or of God. It could not be the invention of good men or angels, for they neither would or could make a book, and tell lies all the time they were writing it, saying, 'Thus saith the Lord,' when it was their own invention. It could not be the invention of bad men or devils, for they would not make a book which commands all duty, forbids all sin, and condemns their souls to hell for all eternity. Therefore, I draw this conclusion, that the Bible must be given by divine inspiration.

In most old communities there is a common sense even in sensuality. Vice itself gets gradually digested into a system, is amenable to certain laws of conventional propriety and honor, has for its object simply the gratification of its appetites, and frowns with quite a conservative air on all new inventions, all untried experiments in iniquity.

Wherever we look in the ancient world the past has been controlled, but nowhere more rigorously than in the history of the Christian church. The methods of control, wherever we find them, fall under three general heads which might be described as (a) the invention, (b) the destruction, and (c) the alteration of documents.

Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.

GUNPOWDER, n. An agency employed by civilized nations for the settlement of disputes which might become troublesome if left unadjusted. By most writers the invention of gunpowder is ascribed to the Chinese, but not upon very convincing evidence. Milton says it was invented by the devil to dispel angels with, and this opinion seems to derive some support from the scarcity of angels.

Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.

I believe that there is no test of greatness in periods, nations or men more sure than the development, among them or in them, of a noble grotesque, and no test of comparative smallness or limitation, of one kind or another, more sure than the absence of grotesque invention, or incapability of understanding it.