Quotes About Ingenuity

However much human ingenuity may increase the treasures which nature provides for the satisfaction of human needs, they can never be sufficient to satisfy all human wants; for man, unlike other creatures, is gifted and cursed with an imagination which extends his appetites beyond the requirements of subsistence. Human

regarding speculative matters that are of no practical moment, and followed by no consequences to himself, farther, perhaps, than that they foster his vanity the better the more remote they are from common sense; requiring, as they must in this case, the exercise of greater ingenuity and art to render them probable.

Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish.

Millions of American women, and some men, commit that outrage every summer day. They are turning a superb treat into mere provender. Shucked and boiled in water, sweet corn is edible and nutritious; roasted in the husk in the hottest possible oven for forty minutes, shucked at the table, and buttered and salted, nothing else, it is ambrosia. No chef's ingenuity and imagination have ever created a finer dish. American women should themselves be boiled in water.

If you do not have the innate ability to seek out someone's work on your own, and you have to wait for Hollywood to do it for you, then you are some sort of hillside grazer of culture; you are a sheep, a cow, what is biologically classified as a ruminant...Fuck you.

Be cunning, and full of tricks, and your people will never be destroyed.

An ingenious man can hardly stay with a people against their will; and a sincere man can more hardly, for any interest of his own, remain in a place where he is likely to be unprofitable, to hinder the good which they might receive from another man, who hath the advantage of a greater interest in their estimation and affection.

Yes, and this is mine. (Baldrick produces a single scruffy piece of paper.) My magnificent octopus.

Synthesize or improvise.

Accordingly, Mr. Cook spent four years, six months, two days, $5,228.20, six thousand yards of wiring, three hundred and two radio tubes, a generator, reams of paper, dizzying mentation and the good will of his wife in assembling his duplication machine.

Out of her mouth came a stream of discrete, miraculous gadgets—tiny but mobile creatures so intricately small that generations marveled and would go on marveling at how the inventor ever got the motors into them.

A good answer is worth reinventing from scratch, again and again.

Where's the glory in repeating what others have done?

Getting something and having the wits to use it...those are two different things.

There is always a way out for those clever enough to find it.

I excel at pulling strings!" said Arachne. "I'm a spider!

Most helmsmen would've been satisfied with a pilot's wheel or a tiller. Leo had also installed a keyboard, monitor, aviation controls from a Learjet, a dubstep soundboard, and motion-control sensors from a Nintendo Wii. He could turn the ship by pulling on the throttle, fire weapons by sampling an album, or raise sails by shaking his Wii controllers really fast. Even by demigod standards, Leo was seriously ADHD.

Frank tugged again with no luck. Even Hazel was trying not to laugh. Frank grimaced with concentration. Suddenly, he disappeared. On the deck where he'd been standing, a green iguana crouched next to an empty set of Chinese handcuffs. "Well done, Frank Zhang," Leo said dryly, doing his impression of Chiron the centaur. "That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas.

Well, yes, I call it the Expando-Duck. It's perfect if you need a small metal duck. Or a larger metal duck.

Intelligence won wars, not brute force.

Great leaders have to think outside the box sometimes.

That is exactly how people beat Chinese handcuffs. They turn into iguanas.

A truly great artist has many talents.

What is the glory in repeating whta others have done?