Quotes About Innovation

People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

Give me the political economist, the sanitary reformer, the engineer; and take your saints and virgins, relics and miracles. The spinning-jenny and the railroad, Cunard's liners and the electric telegraph, are to me… signs that we are, on some points at least, in harmony with the universe.

We've had exactly five balanced budgets since Alan Shepherd rode Freedom 7 in 1961. If we had put off space exploration until these earthbound social and economic conundrums were solved, our rocketry would be about where North Korea's is today.

Charles Krauthammer

At the same time, he studiously avoided becoming a textbook player. He wanted to blend the best of the received wisdom into a refined version of his crazy-seeming "harum scarum" style. He wanted to play a slightly different game than everyone else was playing, to be out of sync with the anticipated rhythms, protocols, and conventions.

From now on, depressions will be scientifically created.

I may conclude this chapter by quoting a saying of Professor Agassiz , that whenever a new and startling fact is brought to light in science, people first say, 'it is not true,' then that 'it is contrary to religion,' and lastly, 'that everybody knew it before.

The automobile is technologically more sophisticated than the bundling board, but the human motives in their uses are sometimes the same.

What's the good of living if you don't try a few things?

A man to carry on a successful business must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing.

All successful employers are stalking men who will do the unusual, men who think, men who attract attention by performing more than is expected of them.

If the human race wants to go to hell in a basket, technology can help it get there by jet.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creative.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can plan weird; that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

Creativity is more than just being different. Anybody can play weird-- that's easy. What's hard is to be as simple as Bach. Making the simple complicated is commonplace--making the complicated simple, awesomely simple--that's creativity.

Anyone can make the simple complicated. Creativity is making the complicated simple.

Anybody can make the simple complecated. Creativity is making the complecated simple.

Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that's creativity.

There is no single answer to any problem in the city. The solution comes from a multiplicity of answers.'"*

Britton is one of those people whose ideas seem too theoretical, too pie-in-the-sky to matter, until suddenly they change the world.