Quotes About Innovation

Richard Rhodes's exceptionally readable The Making of the Atomic Bomb is the place to start. This sweeping chronicle of the difficult and sobering history of the endeavor called the Manhattan Project is marked by Rhodes's insightful studies of the complicated people who were most involved in the creation of the bomb, from Niels Bohr to Robert Oppenheimer. Rhodes followed this book with Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb.

Ma Gigi era doppiamente diverso: perché portava avanti certe idee in un ambiente che ne ha poche e poco ardite, cioè nell'ambiente dello sport; e perché le portava avanti con originalità, con profonda convinzione.

What industry calls innovation, in other words, looks more like the final suicidal throes of addiction. We are blasting the bedrock of our continents, pumping our water with toxins, lopping off mountaintops, scraping off boreal forests, endangering the deep ocean, and scrambling to exploit the melting Arctic—all to get at the last drops and the final rocks. Yes, some very advanced technology is making this possible, but it's not innovation, it's madness.

Nonetheless, that order has now been destabilized, which means that the rest of us are going to have to quickly figure out how to turn "managed degrowth" into something that looks a lot less like the Great Depression and a lot more like what some innovative economic thinkers have taken to calling "The Great Transition."56

When Jonas Salk, a scientist at the University of Pittsburgh, found it and developed the first polio vaccine in 1952, he did not patent the lifesaving treatment. There is no patent, Salk told the broadcaster Edward R. Murrow: Could you patent the sun?

What industry calls innovation, in other words, looks more like the final suicidal throes of addiction. We are blasting the bedrock of our continents, pumping our water with toxins, lopping off mountaintops, scraping off boreal forests, endangering the deep ocean, and scrambling to exploit the melting Arctic—all to get at the last drops and the final rocks.

Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our own society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day, from business to science, literature, art, architecture, and cinema to politics and the law … . They must attack us in order to survive, just as we must destroy them to advance our historic mission. —Michael Ledeen, The War Against the Terror Masters, 2002

Building a livable world isn't rocket science; it's far more complex than that. - Ed Ayres

You were challenged beyond the bounds of what could be done, and found a path to make it true.

consistency is the hobgoblin of small minds

So I put together a street-going rig and came up with the courier.

Procrastination is the most creative act there is.

All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.

First comes thought; then organization of that thought, into ideas and plans; then transformation of those plans into reality. The beginning, as you will observe, is in your imagination.

The great leaders of business, industry, finance, and the great artists, musicians, poets, and writers became great, because they developed the faculty of creative imagination.

It is this - ALL ACHIEVEMENT, ALL EARNED RICHES, HAVE THEIR BEGINNING IN AN IDEA!

It is not unreasonable to look forward to a time when we shall see without eyes, hear without ears and talk without tongues.

Seldom does an individual enter upon highly creative effort in any field of endeavor before the age of forty. The average man reaches the period of his greatest capacity to create between forty and sixty

If life hands you a lemon, don't complain, but instead make lemonade to sell those who are thirsty from complaining.

If the first plan you adopt does not work successfully, replace it with a new plan. If this new plan fails to work, replace it, in turn, with still another, and so on until you find a plan which does work.

We who desire to accumulate riches, should remember the real leaders of the world always have been men who harnessed, and put into practical use, the intangible, unseen forces of unborn opportunity, and have converted those forces, [or impulses of thought], into sky-scrapers, cities, factories, airplanes, automobiles, and every form of convenience that makes life more pleasant.

Ideas are intangible forces, but they have more power than the physical brains that give birth to them.

MAN'S ONLY LIMITATION, within reason, LIES IN HIS DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF HIS IMAGINATION. He has not yet reached the apex of development in the use of his imaginative faculty.

MAN'S ONLY LIMITATION, within reason, LIES IN HIS DEVELOPMENT AND USE OF HIS IMAGINA­TION. He has not yet reached the apex of development in the use of his imaginative faculty. He has merely discovered that he has an imagination, and has commenced to use it in a very elementary way.