Quotes About Ingenuity

But it is clear that Gutenberg had no formal experience pressing grapes. His radical breakthrough relied, instead, on the ubiquity of the screw press in Rhineland wine-making culture, and on his ability to reach out beyond his specific field of expertise and concoct new uses for an older technology.

The towns might have lacked air conditioning and laptops and cable television, but they managed to keep their Toyota 4Runners on the road. So Rosen approached Prestero with an idea: What if you made an incubator out of automobile parts? Three years after Rosen suggested the idea, the Design that Matters team introduced a prototype device called the NeoNurture. From the outside, it looked like a streamlined modern incubator, but its guts were automotive.

Good ideas are like the NeoNurture device. They are, inevitably, constrained by the parts and skills that surround them.

His radical breakthrough relied, instead, on the ubiquity of the screw press in Rhineland wine-making culture, and on his ability to reach out beyond his specific field of expertise and concoct new uses for an older technology. He took a machine designed to get people drunk and turned it into an engine for mass communication.

Bone flutes are among the oldest known artifacts of human technological ingenuity . . . Many archeologists believe that our ancestors have been building drums for at least a hundred thousand years, making music technology almost as old as technology designed for hunting or temperature regulation . . . It seems to be jumping more than a few levels in the hierarchy of need to go directly from spearheads and clothing to the invention of wind instruments.

las ideas son como un trabajo de bricolaje: se construyen a partir de restos. Tomamos las que hemos heredado, o nos hemos encontrado por casualidad, y las reorganizamos dándoles nueva forma.

The quality most desirable in a CEO? According to a global survey conducted by IBM of 1,500 top executives in sixty countries: creativity.

No te enfrentes al caos para transformarlo en orden, sino que limítate a esperar, sin ningún asomo de ingenuidad o inocencia, a que el caos se desborde y te arrastre.

Genius is a thing that happens, not a kind of person.

I remember that at the beginning of the month, the kind of menus my mom and father would prepare for us would have fish, chicken. But at the end of the month - because my father would be waiting for paycheck - the refrigerator would get empty. I remember that without a lot of food left, some of the best meals happened right there.

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

God created man, but I could do better.

The meaning of a work of art is what the artist wants to communicate to his public through the work, by using a specific language. Since every language has its limitations and its problems of expression, there will be obstacles to communicating certain contents: a work's value is to be found in the ingenuity, the originality, and perhaps the economy of the solutions the artist finds to overcome these obstacles.

heretofore made…." He continues reading

Sorrento," I said, trying to hide the fear in my voice, "I want you and your bosses to know something. You're never going to find Halliday's egg. You know why? Because he was smarter than all of you put together. It doesn't matter how much money you have or who you try to blackmail. You're going to lose.

A dude just ahead of me in line actually had a top-of-the-line miniature Sinatro OASIS console concealed inside a prosthetic testicle. Talk about balls.

For a bunch of hairless apes, we've actually managed to invent some pretty incredible things.

We had two tins of Virol, which we were keeping for an emergency; but, finding ourselves in need of an oil-lamp to eke out our supply of candles, we emptied one of the tins in the manner that most appealed to us, and fitted it with a wick made by shredding a bit of canvas. When

Blessed is the Second mouse for he shall inherit the Cheese.

A basic theme for the anarch is how man, left to his own devices, can defy superior forces – whether state, society, or the elements – by making use of their rules without submitting to them. 'It is strange,' Sir William Parry wrote when describing the igloos on Winter Island, 'it is strange to think that all these measure are taken against the cold – and in houses of ice.

An empty belly is the best cook.

So if you're really unhappy down there, and if all kinds of people are telling you that you're suffering from severe perceptual disorders, look for your own way of getting here, and when you find it, could you please bring some cards, 'cause we're getting pretty tired of the marbles. - from "Pipes

He invented ordinary things, and I stress, ordinary. Not brilliant, just ordinary, and that's exactly what humanity needs. Brilliant inventions might be good for brilliant people, but how many brilliant people are there? On the other hand, ordinary inventions are good for everyone.

It is the skill and ingenuity of the experimenter which show him phenomena which depend on a relatively narrow set of relatively easily realizable and reproducible conditions. If there were no phenomena which are independent of all but a manageably small set of conditions, physics would be impossible.