Quotes About Invention

But the history of science teaches that most discoveries were made by several people independently from each other, at more or less the same time; and this fact alone (apart from all other considerations) is sufficient to show that when the time is ripe for a given type of invention or discovery, the favourable chance event which sparks it off is bound to occur sooner or later.

The myopic child, who sometimes saw the world doubled or quadrupled, became the founder of modern optics (the word 'dioptries' on the oculist's prescription is derived from the title of one of Kepler's books); the man who could only see clearly at a short distance, invented the modern astronomical telescope. We shall have occassion to watch the working of this magic dynamo, which transforms pain into achievement and curses into blessings.

Every good joke contains an element of the riddle-it may be childishly simple, or subtle and challenging-which the listener must solve. By doing so, he is lifted out of his passive role and compelled to co-operate, to repeat to some extent the process of inventing the joke, to re-create it in his imagination. The type of entertainment dished out by the mass media makes one apt to forget that true recreation is re-creation.

It is perhaps significant that the German word for the Creator is Schopfer, and for certain schopfen-'to scoop' in the sense of drawing water in buckets from a well. The Creator is thus visualized as creating the world out of His own depth, and the creative mind with a small c is supposed to apply a similar procedure.

A man who has not enough originality to think out a new title for his book will be much less capable of giving it new contents.

Making lives meaningful in old age is new. It therefore requires more imagination and invention than making them merely safe does.

I am reminded of how difficult and time-consuming it is to reinvent the pencil every time you want to send a message.

We had a wealth of something we didn't want, but the wealth itself was intoxicating and we invented games, just so we could experience the sensation of having too much of something.

He was the world-renowned tamer of lightning, the man who had disarmed the heavens, who had vanquished superstition with reason.

If something foreign arrives at Paris, they either think they invented it, or that it has always been there. —Horace Walpole

he could come up with a better idea than anything proposed by all the scientists, the cyberneticians and strategists, with all their computers?

Let us begin by saying that no two symmetriads are alike and that the geometry of each is, as it were, an "invention" of the living ocean. So then, the symmetriad produces in its interior things that are often called "instant machines," though these formations bear no resemblance to machines constructed by people — the term only refers to a certain "mechanical" purposiveness of operation.

the world injected its patterns into human language at the very inception of that language; mathematics sleeps in every utterance, and can only be discovered, never invented.

Lo que fue y pasó, no existe y es como si jamás hubiera existido, al igual que un pastel que te comiste ayer ya no te sirve para nada. Por eso, si uno logra creer en ello, uno podría inventarse un pasado que no tuvo y sería como si lo hubiera vivido de verdad».

Many pretenders to wisdom say that this is all trick and make-believe and nothing more, that there is no such thing as paleface cemeteries, doughy-nosed and gummy-eyed, and never was. Well, perhaps it was just another empty invention – there are certainly fables enough in this world. And yet, even if the story isn't true, it does have a grain of sense and instruction to it, and it's entertaining as well, so it's worth the telling.

L'uomo primitivo non conosceva il bar. Quando la mattina si alzava, nella sua caverna, egli avvertiva subito un forte desiderio di caffè. Ma il caffè non era ancora stato inventato e l'uomo primitivo aggrottava la fronte, assumendo la caratteristica espressione scimmiesca.

Medical textbooks of the day make it clear that these doctors brought their patients to orgasm. In fact, the mechanical vibrator was invented at the end of the nineteenth century to relieve physicians of this tedious and time-consuming chore!

Anglo-Saxon and Franco-Norman came into closer contact, and the linguistic survival techniques on both sides led to the emergence of a supple, adaptable language in which you could invent or half-borrow words and didn't have to worry so much about whether your sentences had the right verb endings or respected certain strict rules of word order and style (as this sentence proves). The result was the earliest form of what would become English.

Scientists have invented a new strain of cannabis without the high. They celebrated with non-alcoholic beer and furious dry-humping.

Not one word of the following is true

Alexander Graham Bell was said to have made the following entirely endearing remark soon after he had invented the telephone: 'I do not think I am exaggerating the possibilities of this invention,' he said, 'when I tell you that it is my firm belief that one day there will be a telephone in every major town in America.

And one final point - we never really know where the next great scientific discovery will come from, nor who will make it. Opening up the thrill and wonder of scientific discovery, [...], greatly increases the chances of finding and inspiring the new Einstein. Wherever she might be.

Oh no, praying is great, without it the thumbscrews and the Iron Maiden probably never would have been invented.

Under the California desert and subsidized by the taxpayers' money, someone had finally invented a chain letter that really worked. A very lethal chain letter.