Quotes About Invention

It is said that an eighteenth-century bishop who read Jonathan Swift's novel Gulliver's Travels threw the book into the fire, indignantly declaring that he didn't believe a word of it. He obviously thought that the story was meant to be true, but suspected that it was invented. Which, of course, is just what it is. The bishop was dismissing the fiction because he thought it was fiction.

Then you understand the wide range of the totally new and unexpected creations they can sometimes come up with. Most people's minds travel along the same road traveled by everyone else, never straying off the route of conventional wisdom. Makers know no such boundaries. They have a rare ability to make their own roads of thought. Their minds venture through the wilderness of all that exists, combining random bits of knowledge in ways that have never been imagined before.

he had created a solution where it had never before existed, or even been imagined.

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM. (Death)

Probably the last man who knew how it worked had been tortured to death years before. Or as soon as it was installed. Killing the creator was a traditional method of patent protection.

No other species anywhere in the world had invented boredom. Perhaps it was boredom, not intelligence, that had propelled them up to the evolutionary ladder.

You're not going to tell me they built fifty-foot-high killer golems, are you? Only a man would think of that. It's our job, said Moist. If you don't think of fifty-foot-high killer golems first, someone else will.

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE MANAGED TO INVENT BOREDOM.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.

I'm just saying man is naturally a mythopoeic creature. What's that mean? said the Senior Wrangler. Means we make things up as we go along, said the Dean, not looking up.

what was once considered impossible is now quite easily achieved. Kings and lords come and go and leave nothing but statues in a desert, while a couple of young men tinkering in a workshop change the way the world works.

Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one. Some people are even more unfortunate. They get them all.

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything. Nikola Tesla

May all your problems be fictional and of your own devising, and may it be a very long time until you come to pen the words 'the end'.

Necessity starves on the stoop of invention.

For us to grow globally, it's not enough to just be an exporter. We have to be a creator.

My lab is like a fantasy world - it is more like a 'James Bond' movie!

The next Internet could be in the making somewhere in someone's lab.

Wozniak had a breakthrough: He had pulled together chips, a power supply, a monitor, and a keyboard.

Though he was neither an engineer nor a computer geek, he helped create one gotta-have-it product after another by always designing it with you and me, the actual users, in mind. Unknown to those listening to him that day, more insanely

Home is the place you return to when you have finally lost your soul. Home is the place where life is born, not the place of your birth, but the place where you seek rebirth. When you no longer have to remember which tale of your own past is true and which is an invention, when you know that you are an invention, then is the time to seek out your home. Perhaps only when you have come to understand that can you finally reach home.

A fecking flamethrower! Why didn't I think of that? Best I came up with was a measly hair dryer.

You're grumpy and broody and secretive all the time. You're no joy to live with, I can tell you that!" "I smile sometimes. I even laughed about your . . . hat." "MacHalo," I corrected tightly. "It's a brilliant invention, and it means I don't need you or V'lane to keep my safe from Shades, and that, Jericho Barrons, is worth its weight in gold: not needing either of you for something!

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions.