Invention is a term which refers to the activity of creating new forms, compositions of matter, devices, or processes, or to the products of this activity. Some inventions are based on pre-existing forms, compositions, processes or ideas. Other inventions are radical breakthroughs which may extend the boundaries of human knowledge or experience.
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- Inventor: A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization.
- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary
- A moment's insight is sometimes worth a life's experience.
- Thomas Fuller, Holy and Profane States, 'Of Fancy', bk. III
- Necessity, who is the mother of invention.
- Commonly misattributed to Plato, this is from the idiomatic translation by Benjamin Jowett (1871) of Plato's Rebublic, Book II, 369-c. A more literal translation of the Greek (Jowett, Plato's Republic: The Greek Text, Vol. III "Notes", 1894, p. 82) reads "Our need will be the real creator."
- A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.
- Henry Ward Beecher, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
- Want, the mistress of invention.
- Susanna Centlivre, The Busy Body Act I, sc. 1
- We issued gorged with knowledge, and I spoke: 'Why, Sirs, they do all this as well as we." "They hunt old trails" said Cyril, "very well; But when did woman ever yet invent?'
- Lord Alfred Tennyson, Princess, II, l. 366
- Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson, Letters and Social Aims
- Creativity perpetually invents itself.
- Paul Palnik Creative Consciousness. The Healthiest State of Mind, p. 36
- All recognized famous inventors had capable predecessors and successors and made their improvements at a time when society was capable of using their product.
- Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, p. 245
- Invention is both the institution of problem solving and advancing human obsolescence. We were naturally selected to replace ourselves.
- Aaron Diaz, Twitter, February 4, 2010
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- All of the biggest technological inventions created by man - the airplane, the automobile, the computer - says little about his intelligence, but speaks volumes about his laziness.
- Creativity is inventing, experimenting, growing, taking risks, breaking rules, making mistakes, and having fun.
- Discovery consists in seeing what everybody else has seen, and thinking what nobody else has thought.
- Electric telegraphs, printing, gas, Tobacco, balloons, and steam, Are little events that have come to pass Since the days of the old regime. And, spite of Lempriere's dazzling page, I'd give--though it might seem bold--A hundred years of the Golden Age For a year of the Age of Gold.
- Henry S. Leigh, in The Two Ages
- Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Anecdotally misattributed to Charles H. Duell, Commisioner, US Patent Office, 1899, see "A Patently False Patent Myth by Samuel Sass in Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 13 (Spring 1989), pg. 310-313.
- The golden hour of invention must terminate like other hours, and when the man of genius returns to the cares, the duties, the vexations, and the amusements of life, his companions behold him as one of themselves--the creature of habits and infirmities.
- Isaac D'Israeli, Literary Character of Men of Genius (ch. XVI)
- Humanity is acquiring all the right technology for all the wrong reasons.
- 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.
- Nikola Tesla 1896, inventor of alternating current
- Invention is the mother of necessity.
- Thorstein Veblen US economist & social philosopher (1857 - 1929)
- It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.
- Lo! Men have become the tools of their tools.
- Lo, this only have I found, that God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.
- Bible Ecclesiastes (ch. VII, v. 29)
- The machine does not isolate man from the great problems of nature but plunges him more deeply into them.
- Antoine de Saint Exupéry Terre des Hommes (Wind, Sand, and Stars) (1939)
- Opportunity is missed by most people because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Probably the earliest flyswatters were nothing more than some sort of striking surface attached to the end of a long stick.
- The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.
- Soon silence will have passed into legend. Man has turned his back on silence. Day after day he invents machines and devices that increase noise and distract humanity from the essence of life, contemplation, meditation...tooting, howling, screeching, booming, crashing, whistling, grinding, and trilling bolster his ego. His anxiety subsides. His inhuman void spreads monstrously like a gray vegetation.
- Technological progress has merely provided us with more efficient means for going backwards.
- Technology... the knack of so arranging the world that we don't have to experience it.
- What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions.
- Everything that could have been invented has been patented.
- The most amazing and effective inventions are not those which do most honor to the human genius.
- To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Invention starts by a spark in the gap between laziness and exuberance.
- Shimon Shmueli
See also
External links
Wikipedia has an article about: Invention Look up invention in Wiktionary, the free dictionary This article does not cite its references or sources. You can help Wikiquote by introducing appropriate citations.
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Thu, 08 Jul 2010 07:41:05 GMT+00:00
, fanciful couture at Franck Sorbier The Associated Press paris franck Sorbier proved that in couture, it's creativity and technical savoir faire and not deep pockets that really count. ...
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