Quotes on Invention

Nature is the source of all true knowledge. She has her own logic, her own laws, she has no effect without cause nor invention without necessity.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best

You need to invent things and you need to get them to people. You need to commercialize those inventions. Obviously, the best way we've come up with doing that is through companies.

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.

In a world of widely distributed knowledge, companies cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research, but should instead buy or license processes or inventions (i.e. patents) from other companies. In addition, internal inventions not being used in a firm’s business should be taken outside the company.

New ideas can be good and bad, just the same as old ones.

Only in men's imagination does every truth find an effective and undeniable existence. Imagination, not invention, is the supreme master of art as of life.

One of the ways that your project, your personal healing, or your social invention can change the world is through story. But even if no one ever learns of it, even if it is invisible to every human on Earth, it will have no less of an effect.

Hope, even more than necessity, is the mother of invention.

It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition-and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing that gives out and then that-"Bugs"as such little faults and difficulties are called show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached.

The spectacle of Nature is always new, for she is always renewing the spectators. Life is her most exquisite invention; and death is her expert contrivance to get plenty of life.

I think the inner person is the most important.... I would like to see an invention that keeps the mind alert. That's what is important.

The poet doesn't invent. He listens.

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident. . . Almost none of my inventions came about totally by accident. They were achieved by having trained myself to endure and tolerate hard work.

No employment can be managed without arithmetic, no mechanical invention without geometry.

Whether humanity is to comprehensively prosper...depends entirely on the integrity of the human individuals and not on the political and economic systems. The cosmic question has been asked: are humans worthwhile to universe invention?

Man is made for science; he reasons from effects to causes, and from causes to effects; but he does not always reason without error. In reasoning, therefore, from appearances which are particular, care must be taken how we generalize; we should be cautious not to attribute to nature, laws which may perhaps be only of our own invention.

If honesty did not exist, we ought to invent it as the best means of getting rich.

You have to know accounting. It's the language of practical business life. It was a very useful thing to deliver to civilization. I've heard it came to civilization through Venice which of course was once the great commercial power in the Mediterranean. However, double entry bookkeeping was a hell of an invention.

I must create a system, or be enslav'd by another man's.