Quotes About Innovation

Wise men make more opportunities than they find.

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.

Acorns were good until bread was found.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books.

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator.

Books must follow sciences, and not sciences books." [ Proposition touching Amendment of Laws ]

It would be an unsound fancy and self-contradictory to expect that things which have never yet been done can be done except by means which have never yet been tried.

Young men are fitter to invent than to judge, fitter for execution than for counsel, and fitter for new projects than for settled business.

It is amateurs who have one big bright beautiful idea that they can never abandon. Professionals know that they have to produce theory after theory before they are likely to hit the jackpot.

Only gradually did I realize that this lack of qualification could be an advantage. By the time most scientists have reached age thirty they are trapped by their own expertise. They have invested so much effort in one particular field that it is often extremely difficult, at that time in their careers, to make a radical change. I, on the other hand, knew nothing, except for a basic training in somewhat old-fashioned physics and mathematics and an ability to turn my hand to new things. I

It took over twenty-five years for our model of DNA to go from being only rather plausible, to being very plausible (as a result of the detailed work on DNA fibers), and from there to being virtually certainly correct. Even then it was correct only in outline, not in

At first people refuse to believe that a strange new thing can be done, then they begin to hope that it can be done, then they see that it can be done--then it is done and all the world wonders why it was not done centuries ago.

I wanted to write and direct movies and not be forced to adapt them from a bestselling book.

A high degree of autonomy is what permits innovation, experimentation and risk taking in a bureaucracy. If the slightest mistake can end a career, then no one will ever take risks.

Imagination is a very scarce resource, and also a highly imperfect one, because thinking about things that have not happened is inherently more difficult than thinking about things that have.

Societies are not trapped by their pasts and freely borrow ideas and institutions from each other.

Famous shipbuilders such as Donald Mackay referred to a certain part of his ships as having a 'forepeak'. Has anyone discovered any of his contemporaries as seeking to exceed his prowess by incorporating five, six or more 'peaks' in their ship design?

Has any historian sought to question why the wagonmaster of America's westward-bound pioneers 'circled' the wagons instead of 'squaring' or 'triangulating' them for a better defense strategy in fighting-off Indian raids on the plains:

Mankind is soon out of the 'DARK AGES'.

Many old timers spoke of 'winding-up' a Model 'T' Ford to get it started: In the same time period, watchmakers had perfected time-pieces which required 'winding-up' only once in every eight days:

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction.

Notre tête est ronde pour permettre à la pensée de changer de direction.

Our heads are round so that thoughts can change direction - Francis Picabia

Cubism is a Cathedral of shit.