invention quotes

O! for a muse of fire, that would ascend the brightest heaven of invention.

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.

I’m an inventor.

Man who invented the hamburger was smart; man who invented the cheeseburger was a genius.

Science is a tool, and we invent tools to do things we want. It’s a question of how those tools are used by people.

One must be an inventor to read well. There is then creative reading as well as creative writing.

I there represent that I sent notice of my method to Mr. Leibnitz before he sent notice of his method to me, and left him to make it appear that he had found his method before the date of my letter.

If Al Gore invented the Internet, I invented spell check.

I invented the cordless extension cord.

I didn’t just invent saying offensive things.

When Thomas Edison worked late into the night on the electric light, he had to do it by gas lamp or candle. I’m sure it made the work seem that much more urgent.

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

I don’t think that you can invent on behalf of customers unless you’re willing to think long-term, because a lot of invention doesn’t work. If you’re going to invent, it means you’re going to experiment, and if you’re going to experiment, you’re going to fail, and if you’re going to fail, you have to think long term.

Democracy is not static. It is a living force. Every new idea, every new invention offers opportunity for both good and evil.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

From things that have happened and from things as they exist and from all things that you know and all those you cannot know, you make something through your invention that is not a representation but a whole new thing truer than anything true and alive, and you make it alive, and if you make it well enough, you give it immortality.

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.

I have always felt it is my destiny to build a machine that would allow man to fly.

The function of the artist is to invent, not to chronicle.

Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.

Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.

Necessity… the mother of invention.

It is my belief that nearly any invented quotation, played with confidence, stands a good chance to deceive.

If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him.

I think that technology is always invented for historical reasons, to solve a historical problem. But they very soon reveal themselves to be capable of doing things that aren’t historical that nobody had ever thought of doing before.

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.

Among all the marvels of modern invention, that with which I am most concerned is, of course, air transportation. Flying is perhaps the most dramatic of recent scientific attainment. In the brief span of thirty-odd years, the world has seen an inventor’s dream first materialized by the Wright brothers at Kitty Hawk become an everyday actuality.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.