Quotes About Invention

It is ourselves alone that make our days lucky or unlucky. Away, then, with a vain prejudice, the invention of the priesthood, which has been transmitted by our ancestors to an ignorant people.

All so-called revelations, referred to in the realm of religion, and all discoveries of basic or new principles in the field of invention, take place through the faculty of creative imagination.

There is no standard price on ideas. The creator of ideas makes his own price, and, if he is smart, gets it.

He presented himself at Mr Edison's

Man can create nothing which he does not first conceive in thought.

Thomas Edison dreamed of a lamp that could be operated by electricity, began where he stood to put his dream into action, and despite more than ten thousand failures, he stood by that dream until he made it a physical reality. Practical dreamers do not quit!

Edison concentrated upon the work of harmonizing natural laws

Every great railroad, and every outstanding financial institution and every mammoth business enterprise, and every great invention, began in the imagination of some one person.

How do you innovate? First, try to get in trouble. I mean serious, but not terminal, trouble. I hold—it is beyond speculation, rather a conviction—that innovation and sophistication spark from initial situations of necessity, in ways that go far beyond the satisfaction of such necessity (from the unintended side effects of, say, an initial invention or attempt at invention).

Social science means inventing a certain brand of human we can understand.

Yet in spite of the visibility of the counterevidence, and the wisdom you can pick up free of charge from the ancients (or grandmothers), moderns try today to create inventions from situations of comfort, safety, and predictability instead of accepting the notion that "necessity really is the mother of invention.

it took me a lifetime to figure out the second point: implementation does not necessarily proceed from invention. It, too, requires luck and circumstances.

If you think that the inventions we see around us came from someone sitting in a cubicle and concocting them according to a timetable, think again: almost everything of the moment is the product of serendipity.

Engineers tend to develop tools for the pleasure of developing tools, not to induce nature to yield its secrets.

The laser is a prime illustration of a tool made for a given purpose (actually no real purpose) that then found applications that were not even dreamed of at the time. It was a typical "solution looking for a problem.

The story of the wheel itself is even more humbling than that of the suitcase:

and unappreciated upon their discovery, and remained unappreciated well after their initial use.

On the day when we are able to foresee inventions we will be living in a state where everything conceivable has been invented. Our

If it were known and obvious, then someone next door would have already come up with the idea and it would have become generic.

The scientific association with a big idea, the "brand name," goes to the one who connects the dots, not the one who makes a casual observation—even Charles Darwin, who uncultured scientists claim "invented" the survival of the fittest, was not the first to mention it.

los «modernos» intentan innovar partiendo de una situación de comodidad, seguridad y previsibilidad en lugar de aceptar la noción de que la inventiva surge de la necesidad.

What do you do with a textbook case when no one's written the textbook?

Whoever invented the spork should be killed.

Los símbolos tienen fuerza —anuncia—. Tú ves una cruz, y sientes algo. Ves una esvástica, y sientes otra cosa. Sin embargo, la esvástica es también un símbolo hindú que significa <>, y eso demuestra que los símbolos pueden ser mortalmente corrompidos. Por eso yo me invento los míos. Para mí están cargados de significado, y eso es lo que cuenta.