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Invention What business analyst in the 1970s would have looked to rural Arkansas to find the future of retailing? And yet, that is where Wal-Mart emerged. James K. Glassman, American Enterprise Institute Home is an invention on which no one has yet improved. Ann Douglas 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 The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. Plato An inventor is a man who looks 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. Alexander Graham Bell Doubt is the father of invention. Galileo Galilei The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Kay I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2,000-step process. Thomas Edison The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. Mark Twain Next came the Patent laws. These began in England in 1624; and, in this country, with the adoption of our constitution. Before then, 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 Everything that can be invented, has been invented. Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. patent office I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success.... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything. Nikola Tesla I can see the time when every city will have one. An American mayor's reaction to the news of the invention of the telephone Energy and persistence conquer all things. Benjamin Franklin I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize. George Bernard Shaw The American, by nature, is optimistic. He is experimental, an inventor and a builder who builds best when called upon to build greatly. John F. Kennedy We are called the nation of inventors. And we are. We could still claim that title and wear its loftiest honors if we had stopped with the first thing we invented, which was human liberty. Mark Twain Science has always been too dignified to invent a good backscratcher. Don Marquis Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need. Charles F. Kettering Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success. Thomas A. Edison If you're trying to invent something new, you're going to reach a lot of discouraging points, and most people give up. Steve Lacy 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. Dave Barry The radical of one century is the conservative of the next. The radical invents the views. When he has worn them out the conservative adopts them. Mark Twain If you want to be creative, stay in part a child, with the creativity and invention that characterizes children before they are deformed by adult society. Jean Piaget I just invent, then wait until man comes around to needing what I've invented. R. Buckminster Fuller The wheel was invented so we could move faster. Credit was invented so we would have to. Cullen Hightower My method is different. I don't rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the devise in my mind. When I have gone as far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain. Win Ng If we have learned one thing from the history of invention and discovery, it is that, in the long run - and often in the short one - the most daring prophecies seem laughably conservative. Arthur C. Clarke The lesson that I learned from the greatest inventors and scientists is that I will invent and discover more things by de-emphasizing quantitative methods and using a multi-disciplinary, unorthodox, intuitive and nature-inspired approach. Philip Emeagwali To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Thomas A. Edison The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered. Jean Piaget If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners. Johnny Carson I'm glad cavepeople didn't invent television, because they would have just sat around and watched talk shows all day instead of creating tools. Dave James (The television is) an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home. David Frost Each race determines for itself what indecencies are. Nature knows no indecencies, man invents them. Mark Twain Don't reinvent the wheel, just realign it. Anthony J. D'Angelo Words were never invented to fully explain the peaceful aura that surrounds us when we are in communion with minds of the same thoughts. Eddie Myers Our inventions mirror our secret wishes. Lawrence Durrell No book has yet been written in praise of a woman who let her husband and children starve or suffer while she invented even the most useful things, or wrote books, or expressed herself in art, or evolved philosophic systems. Anna Garlin Spencer I do not know who first invented the myth of sexual equality. But it is a myth willfully fostered and nourished by certain semi-scientists and other fiction writers. And it has done more, I suspect, to unsettle marital happiness than any other false doctrine of this myth-ridden age. Phyllis McGinley Design in art, is a recognition of the relation between various things, various elements in the creative flux. You can't invent a design. You recognize it, in the fourth dimension. That is, with your blood and your bones, as well as with your eyes. David Herbert Lawrence By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote. In fact, it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of others as it is to invent. Ralph Waldo Emerson Before the work comes to you, you have to invent work. Steve Lacy I will ignore all ideas for new works on engines of war, the invention of which has reached its limits and for whose improvements I see no further hope. Sextus Julius Frontinus, 1st century A.D The need of exercise is a modern superstition, invented by people who ate too much and had nothing to think about. George Santayana The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization. Mikhail Gorbachev Inventing is a skill that some people have and some people don't. But you can learn how to invent. Ray Dolby Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute. Gil Stern An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots. Charles Franklin Kettering You must invent your own games and teach us old ones how to play. Nikki Giovanni Change is no modern invention. It is as old as time and as unlikely to disappear. It has always to be counted on as of the essence of human experience. James Rowland Angell Our world is driven by our remarkable ability to carefully measure and divide units of time. In a reasonable sense, the invention of clocks has had a greater effect on our lives than the invention of wheels. You can invent wheels relatively easily, if you live where trees fall over. Bill Nye Invention is one of the great marks of genius, but if we consult experience, we shall find, that it is by being conversant with the inventions of others, that we learn to invent: as by reading the thoughts of others we learn to think. Sir Joshua Reynolds Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun. Mary Lou Cook 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. Francis Bacon Facts have long since upstaged fiction, and the novelistic imagination now contents itself with documenting incidents it wouldn't have the temerity to invent. Peter Conrad I can't invent stuff, but the techniques fiction writers use to create character and suspense can also be used when writing non-fiction. Tracy Kidder If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as "candle making industry threatened. Newt Gingrich I think we invent jargon because it saves times talking to one-another. John M. Smith What God did not do is invent our EGO. Ralph Steadman When they invent the transporter on Star Trek, then the Internet will be a real threat. Jerry Storch All I'm saying is that it's shortsighted to blame TV. It's simply another symptom. TV didn't invent our aesthetic childishness here any more than the Manhattan Project invented aggression. David Foster Wallace After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them and invent others. Edith Wharton For more than 150 years free men in our countries have had the opportunities to educate themselves, choose their own religions, select their own occupations, accumulate capital and invent better ways of doing things. Charles E. Wilson It frequently happens that two persons, reasoning right on a mechanical subject, think alike and invent the same thing without any communication with each other. Oliver Evans I'm still the same person, thinking the same way, so it's possible I will invent something. Erno Rubik Imagination has brought mankind through the dark ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams--daydreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing--are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to invent, and therefore to foster, civilization. L. Frank Baum Man is a creature of hope and invention, both of which believe the idea that things cannot be changed. Tom Clancy Of all the inventions that have helped to unify China perhaps the airplane is the most outstanding. Its ability to annihilate distance has been in direct proportion to its achievements in assisting to annihilate suspicion and misunderstanding among provincial officials far removed from one another or from the officials at the seat of government. Madame Chiang It's a well known fact that computing devices such as the abacus were invented thousands of years ago. But it's not well known that the first use of a common computer protocol occured in the Old Testament. This, of course, was when Moses aborted the Egyptians' process with a control-sea. Tom Galloway America did not invent human rights. In a very real sense ... human rights invented America. James Earl "Jimmy" Carter, Jr. I bet what happened was, they discovered fire and invented the wheel on the same day. Then, that night, they burned the wheel. Jack Handey (Deep Thoughts) Perhaps I know why it is man alone who laughs: He alone suffers so deeply that he had to invent laughter. Friedrich Nietzsche I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention . . . arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. Agatha Christie Although human subtlety makes a variety of inventions by different means to the same end, it will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple, or more direct than does nature, because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. Leonardo DaVinci I am taught the poorness of our invention, the ugliness of towns and palaces. Art and luxury have early learned that they must work as enhancement and sequel to this original beauty. I am over instructed for my return. Henceforth I shall be hard to please. I cannot go back to toys. I am grown expensive and sophisticated. I can no longer live without elegance: but a countryman shall be my master of revels. He who knows the most, he who knows what sweets and virtues are in the ground, the waters, the plants, the heavens, and how to come at these enchantments, is the rich and royal man. Only as far as the masters of the world have called in nature to their aid, can they reach the height of magnificence. Ralph Waldo Emerson If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him. Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet) It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction! Abraham Lincoln Work is a necessity for man. Man invented the alarm clock. Pablo Picasso At sixty-one, I'm young enough to invent an entirely new chapter of my life rather than perpetually re-reading the old ones. Howell Raines An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously. Charles F. Kettering Parents were invented to make children happy by giving them something to ignore. Ogden Nash Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse. Ronald Reagan We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. Eric Hoffer Good taste is the worst vice ever invented. Edith Sitwell Advertisers constantly invent cures to which there is no disease. Author Unknown Art is merely the refuge which the ingenious have invented, when they were supplied with food and women, to escape the tediousness of life. W. Somerset Maugham What happens often - although I'm not particularly a victim of this sort of thing - is that somebody will make a quote, or invent a remark and it gets printed, ends up on the 'net and it becomes currency. And some of them are so bizarre! Robert Palmer God loved the birds and invented trees. Man loved the birds and invented cages. Jacques Deval I think that anyone who comes upon a Nautilus machine suddenly will agree with me that its prototype was clearly invented at some time in history when torture was considered a reasonable alternative to diplomacy. Anna Quindlen If life doesn't offer a game worth playing, then invent a new one. Anthony J. D'Angelo The infliction of cruelty with a good conscience is a delight to moralists - that is why they invented hell. Bertrand Russell Enzymes are things invented by biologists that explain things which otherwise require harder thinking. Jerome Lettvin We are always talking about being together, and yet whatever we invent destroys the family, and makes us wild, touchless beasts feeding on technicolor prairies and rivers. Edward Dahlberg If there is no sufficient reason for war, the war party will make war on one pretext, then invent another... after the war is on. Robert M. La Follette In order to rally people, governments need enemies. They want us to be afraid, to hate, so we will rally behind them. And if they do not have a real enemy, they will invent one in order to mobilize us. Thich Nhat Hanh I used the term (information superhighway) in a study I wrote for the Rockefeller Foundation in 1974. I thought: if you create a highway, then people are going to invent cars. That's dialectics. If you create electronic highways, something has to happen. Nam June Paik Jazz: Music invented for the torture of imbeciles. Henry van Dyke What did moths bump into before the electric light bulb was invented? Boy, the lightbulb really screwed the moth up didn't it? Are there moths on their way to the sun now going, "It's gonna be worth it!" Bill Hicks God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just keeps on trying other things. Pablo Picasso What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control. Thomas Edison Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing. Joshua Reynolds (The) world (is) in everlasting conflict between the new idea and the old allegiances, new arts and new inventions against the old establishment. Joyce Cary The invention of the teenager was a mistake, in Miss Manners' opinion.... Once you identify a period of life in which people have few restrictions and, at the same time, few responsibilities - they get to stay out late but don't have to pay taxes - naturally, nobody wants to live any other way. Judith Martin In the name of Hippocrates, doctors have invented the most exquisite form of torture ever known to man: survival. Luis Bunuel I look forward to the invention of faster-than-light travel. What I'm not looking forward to is the long wait in the dark once I arrive at my destination. Marc Beland Copyright ©Ronald W. 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