INVENTION

Related Subjects: Discovery, Imagination, Machinery, Originality, Progress, Science, Skill

1. A tool is but the extension of a man's hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well-being of mankind.—H. W. BEECHER, Proverbs from Plymouth Pulpit
   

2. God hath made man upright; but they have sought out many inventions.—Bible, Ecclesiastes 7:29
   

3. A weak invention of the enemy.—COLLEY CIBBER, Richard III (adaptation)
   

4. 'Tis frivolous to fix pedantically the date of particular inventions. They have all been invented over and over fifty times. Man is the arch machine, of which all these shifts drawn from himself are toy models.—EMERSON, Conduct of Life
   

5. Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.—EMERSON, Letters and Social Aims
   

6. Invention breeds invention.—EMERSON, Society and Solitude
   

7. Invention came that men might have life and that they might have it more abundantly.—GLENN FRANK
   

8. The social reformer fights wealth. The inventor fights want. The social reformer fights slave drivers. The inventor fights slavery.—GLENN FRANK
   

9. The inventor is not the bought-and-paid-for slave of business and industry. He is blood-brother of the scientist and the artist. He is animated by the itch to invent as the scientist is animated by the itch to know and the artist by the itch to create.—GLENN FRANK
   

10. The great inventors have been the great surprisers. Again and again they have shamed our limited outlook. They have done the things we have said could not be done. They have been experts in the impossible.—GLENN FRANK
    

11. The final goal of inventor and engineer is to make available to the masses comforts and conveniences that now only the wealthy may have. In other words, whether we realize it or not, the inventors and the engineers are waging a war of human liberation.—GLENN FRANK
    

12. Take the advice of a faithful friend, and submit thy inventions to his censure.—THOMAS FULLER, Holy and Profane State
    

13. Invention by accident rather than design has been a common
    phenomenon.—JOHN A. MALONEY
    

14. Inventions are usually the results of synthesis.—JOHN A. MALONEY
    

15. Gladstone, seeing one of Faraday's inventions, asked of what possible use it could be. "Why, Mr. Prime Minister," answered Faraday, "You will soon be able to tax it!"—JOHN A. MALONEY
    

16. Th' invention all admir'd, and each, how he
    To be th' inventor miss'd, so easy it seem'd,
    Once found, which yet unfound most would have thought
    Impossible.—MILTON, Paradise Lost
    

17. Some one invented the telephone,
    And interrupted a nation's slumbers,
    Ringing wrong but similar numbers.—OGDEN NASH, Look What you Did, Christopher
    

18. Nothing is invented and perfected at the same time.—Proverb
    

19. Rarely does it happen that any device or invention of importance is made by one man alone. The threads of inquiry are taken up and traced, one labor succeeding another, each tracing it a little further, often without apparent result. This goes on sometimes for centuries, until at length one man, greater perhaps than his fellows, seeking to fulfil the needs of his time, gathers the various threads together, treasures up the gain of past successes and failures, and uses them as the means for some solid achievement.—SAMUEL SMILES
    

20. The greatest inventions were produced in times of ignorance; as the use of the compass, gunpowder, and printing; and by the dullest nation, as the Germans.—SWIFT, Thoughts on Various Subjects
    

21. Science, for one thing, has greatly systematized the processes of invention. It might be said that invention has become more self-conscious since the advent of scientific perception of the attributes and uses of materials.—S. G. WILLIAMSON, The American Craftsman