Quotes on Invention

If words were invented to conceal thought, newspapers are a great improvement of a bad invention

The arts and inventions of each period are only its costume, and do not invigorate men.

Where Young must torture his invention To flatter knaves, or lose his pension.

Order, unity, and continuity are human inventions, just as truly as catalogues and encyclopedias.

Descartes constructed as noble a road of science, from the point at which he found geometry to that to which he carried it, as Newton himself did after him. ... He carried this spirit of geometry and invention into optics, which under him became a completely new art.

Men are rather beholden ... generally to chance or anything else, than to logic, for the invention of arts and sciences.

A global society is coming into being, a global society that is made out of information that was not intended to be ours, but is ours, by the mistaken invention of computers and the printing press, information is power, and information has spilled by the clumsy hands of the dominator culture so that the information is everywhere, never before has the situation been so fluid, we might be able to finally have a crack at this

Compound interest on debt was the banker's greatest invention, to capture, and enslave, a productive society.

Don't think of your website as a self-promotion machine, think of it as a self-invention machine.

Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

The issue for patents for new discovers has given a spring to invention beyond my conception.

Chaos theory, a more recent invention, is equally fertile ground for those with a bent for abusing sense. It is unfortunately named, for 'chaos' implies randomness. Chaos in the technical sense is not random at all. It is completely determined, but it depends hugely, in strangely hard-to-predict ways, on tiny differences in initial conditions.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse.

You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.

Logic leaves us no choice. In that sense, math always involves both invention and discovery: we invent the concepts but discover their consequences. … in mathematics our freedom lies in the questions we ask – and in how we pursue them – but not in the answers awaiting us.

The quiet conscience is an invention of the devil.

Supposing I said there was a planet without schools or teachers, where study was unknown, and yet the inhabitants -- doing nothing but live and walk about -- came to know all things, to carry in their minds the whole of learning; would you not think I was romancing? Well, just this, which seems so fanciful as to be nothing but the invention of a fertile imagination, is a reality. It is the child's way of learning.

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought.

Every science has for its basis a system of principles as fixed and unalterable as those by which the universe is regulated and governed. Man cannot make principles; he can only discover them.

When you receive criticism from well-meaning people, it pays to ask, ‘Are they right?’ And if they are, you need to adapt what they’re doing. If they’re not right, if you really have conviction that they’re not right, you need to have that long-term willingness to be misunderstood. It’s a key part of invention.

Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don't do anything new.