Quotes & Sayings About Breakthroughs

We are always saying to ourself.. we have to innovate. We got to come up with that breakthrough ... we're only paid for breakthroughs. — Bill Gates

I'm convinced that the best solutions are often the ones that are counterintuitive - that challenge conventional thinking - and end in breakthroughs. It is always easier to do things the same old way ... why change? To fight this, keep your dissatisfaction index high and break with tradition. Don't be too quick to accept the way things are being done. Question whether there's a better way. Very often you will find that once you make this break from the usual way - and incidentally, this is probably the hardest thing to do - and start on a new track your horizon of new thoughts immediately broadens. New ideas flow in like water. Always keep your interests broad - don't let your mind be stunted by a limited view. — Nathaniel J. Wyeth

A good scientist (DT quoted Einstein) will acknowledge that more than 50% of scientific breakthroughs are reached through post-rationalised ideas, not through sequential logic. — Rory Sutherland

To save the planet, we do not need miraculous technical breakthroughs, or vast amounts of capital. Essentially we need a radical change in our thinking and behaviour. — Ted Trainer

One reason people who spend a lot of time thinking about and working on a problem or a craft seem to find breakthroughs more often than everyone else is that they've failed more often than everyone else. — Seth Godin

I believe the biggest breakthroughs on cancer could come from brilliant researchers based in India. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

The fact that Edison was a supporter of the mechanical breakthroughs in the physical world doesn't mean he wasn't equally entranced by the metaphysical. — Jodi Picoult

There are riches to be found simply by capturing the value released through others' disruptive breakthroughs. — Jay Samit

The actions we took in the aftermath of 9/11 were harsh but necessary and effective. These steps were fully sanctioned and carefully followed. The detention and interrogation of top terrorists like Abu Zubaydah, Khalid Sheikh Muhammed and Abu Faraj al-Libbi yielded breakthroughs which have kept this country safe. — Jose Rodriguez

How do you engineer breakthroughs? — Anonymous

Don't they know science doesn't work like that? You can't just order scientific breakthroughs. They happen when you are looking at something you've been working on for years and suddenly see a connection you never noticed before, or when you're looking for something else altogether. Sometimes they even happen by accident. Don't they know you can't get a scientific breakthrough just because you want one? — Connie Willis

There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. — Helen Frankenthaler

When will we make the same breakthroughs in the way we treat each other as we have made in technology? — Theodore Zeldin

As medical research continues and technology enables new breakthroughs, there will be a day when malaria and most all major deadly diseases are eradicated on Earth. — Peter Diamandis

And I'm going to work as hard as I can ... for cancer research and hopefully, maybe, we'll have some cures and some breakthroughs. I'd like to think I'm going to fight my brains out to be back here again next year for the Arthur Ashe recipient. I want to give it next year! — Jim Valvano

Nothing is as evanescent in history as the pansophic theories that flourish among the illuminati of all times under the bright sunlight of the latest scientific discoveries; and nothing can be more easily dismissed by later periods as mere speculation. — H. Richard Niebuhr

I have spent forty-five years teasing out the universal principles of success that are necessary to create massive breakthroughs. I am committed to teaching and disseminating those around the world. I also believe that most transformational leaders are focusing too much on outer techniques and overlooking the important inner qualities of beingness and presence that are required to create real and lasting transformation in the world. — Jack Canfield

Flow tends to be the psychic signature of world-class performance and paradigm-shifting breakthroughs, — Steven Kotler

Industrial opportunities are going to stem more from the biological sciences than from chemistry and physics. I see biology as being the greatest area of scientific breakthroughs in the next generation. — George E. Brown Jr.

All personal breakthroughs begin with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. You must feel deep in your gut that not only has this belief cost you pain in the past, but it's costing you in the present and, ultimately, can only bring you pain in the future. Then you must associate tremendous pleasure to the idea of adopting a new, empowering belief. — Tony Robbins

All personal breakthroughs being with a change in beliefs. So how do we change? The most effective way is to get your brain to associate massive pain to the old belief. — Tony Robbins

Our media, which is like a planetary nervous system, are far more sensitive to breakdowns than to breakthroughs. They filter out our creativity and successes, considering them less newsworthy than violence, war, and dissent. When we read newspapers and watch television news, we feel closer to a death in the social body than to an awakening. — Barbara Marx Hubbard

Great teamwork is the only way we create the breakthroughs that define our careers. — Pat Riley

We are a caring nation, and our values should also guide us on how we harness the gifts of science. New medical breakthroughs bring the hope of cures for terrible diseases and treatments that can improve the lives of millions. Our challenge is to make sure that science serves the cause of humanity instead of the other way around. — George W. Bush

While the opportunity to improve yourself and your situation is a great thing, our striving to build perfect lives seems to have morphed into perfectionism so focused on itself that we forget about others in the world. We work so hard to build the ultimate luxury sedan, to embody society's standard of beauty, and to achieve historical scientific breakthroughs that we conveniently forget our family members in other parts of the world who must walk miles each day in their only set of clothing for the opportunity to go to school. — Holly Sprink

Every company is becoming a software company because the products that people are using have some element of software in them," says Jim DuBois, CIO of Microsoft. "This makes the integration between IT and the product organization much more important for disruptive breakthroughs; there is very little that IT or product can do alone. — Martha Heller

Extraordinary breakthroughs are only ordinary breaks that were grabbed, explored, improved, maximized and harnessed to a profitable maximum — Ikechukwu Joseph

Breakthroughs come when people learn how to take the time to stop and examine their assumptions. — Peter M. Senge

Just like the breakthroughs, the bad stuff always takes you by surprise. (121) — Gail Giles

More people than ever are being paid to think, instead of just doing routine tasks. Yet making complex decisions and solving new problems is difficult for any stretch of time because of some real biological limits on your brain. Surprisingly, one of the best ways to improve mental performance is to understand these limits. In act 1, Emily discovers why thinking requires so much energy, and develops new techniques for dealing with having too much to do. Paul learns about the space limits of his brain, and works out how to deal with information overload. Emily finds out why it's so hard to do two things at once, and rethinks how she organizes her work. Paul discovers why he is so easily distracted, and works on how to stay more focused. Then he finds out how to stay in his brain's "sweet spot." In the last scene, Emily discovers that her problem-solving techniques need improving, and learns how to have breakthroughs when she needs them most. — David Rock

Herpes B is a very rare infection in humans but a nasty one, with a case fatality rate of almost 70 percent among those few dozen people infected during the twentieth century (before recent breakthroughs in antiviral pharmaceutics) and almost 50 percent even since then. When — David Quammen

If you want to minimize the possibility of unexpected breakthroughs, tell people they will receive no resources at all unless they spend the bulk of their time competing against each other to convince you they know in advance what they are going to discover. — David Graeber

All these developments reflect new strategic opportunities. Unlike the days of the Cold War which was marked by rigid power relationships, the security terrain today is much more fluid, more versatile and with greater room for maneuver. We should not underestimate the historical forces at work, nor our capacity to make major breakthroughs. — Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono

There's so many things that life is, and no matter how many breakthroughs, trials will exist and we're going to get through it. Just be strong. — Mary J. Blige

Breakthroughs arise when someone can combine many ideas together. Think broadly, not deeply. — Joshua Krook

From the theft of confidential cables to 21st-century protest movements, to development breakthroughs that have the potential to change millions of lives, we are all in uncharted territory. — Hillary Clinton

sustained exponential improvement in most aspects of computing, extraordinarily large amounts of digitized information, and recombinant innovation. These three forces are yielding breakthroughs that convert science fiction into everyday reality, — Anonymous

Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves. Breakthroughs are created by such heroes, by men and women who will stand for the result while it is only a possibility - people who will act to make possibility real. — Werner Erhard

When I read about genetics, I see breakthroughs every day. And while I'm trying to learn more about behavioral science, I must say that I don't feel I get tremendous intellectual stimulation from most of the things I read. — Harold E. Varmus

Look at South Africa, the former Soviet Union, and the Middle East. They still have many problems, setbacks as well as breakthroughs, but basically changes have happened that were considered unthinkable a decade ago. — Dalai Lama

If you are predisposed to be patient, disciplined and psychologically appreciate the idea of buying bargains, then you're likely to be good at it. If you have a need for action, if you want to be involved in the new and exciting technological breakthroughs of our time, that's great, but you're not a value investor, and you shouldn't be one. — Seth Klarman

One of the great breakthroughs of evolution theory is that you start with simple things and they will grow into complexity. — Brian Eno

In a world where routine production is footloose ... competitive advantage lies not in one-time breakthroughs but in continual improvements. Stable technologies get away. — Robert Reich

In the heat of unprecedented technological breakthroughs it is easy to think that we are invincible, like gods who would rule the world. But none of us need be reminded that the future of our planet is being held hostage by our own cleverness, with nuclear physics, chemistry, agribusiness, mineral exploration, and bioengineering threatening our biosphere in ways we could never have imagined even twenty years ago. — Hal Zina Bennett

If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough - they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. — Donald A. Norman

We have a lot to gain through furthering stem cell research, but medical breakthroughs should be fundamentally about saving, not destroying, human life. Therefore, I support stem cell research that does not destroy the embryo. — Michael Steele

I think it would be a great tragedy to devote medical resources and genetic technological breakthroughs to purposes that are not to do with health or medicine, but instead are to do with satisfying the desires that are created by the consumer society. — Michael Sandel

a lot of so-called health breakthroughs are not nearly as impressive as their marketing makes them appear. While it may be good business to spin the numbers to increase sales, it isn't good science. One — T. Colin Campbell

The biggest breakthroughs in consciousness occur when things are difficult; when we have a choice to fall to the worst of ourselves or rise to the best of ourselves. — Yehuda Berg

The discovery of HIV in 1983 and the proof that it was the cause of AIDS in 1984 were the first major scientific breakthroughs that provided a specific target for blood-screening tests and opened the doorway to the development of antiretroviral medications. — Anthony Fauci

Of all the research I've read about breakthroughs in mental illness, this message resonates most loudly. We need one another to lead healthy lives, and when faced with the prospect of illness, be it mental or physical, we need to believe others can help us through to the other side. — Sheila Hamilton

Of course any kind of film process has ups and downs and days where you're stuck and have breakthroughs. — Bryce Dallas Howard

..technological breakthroughs, such as the Internet, have made international communications not just possible but commonplace. However, for most Americans, these international conversations are viable only if the other side speaks English. In this new international era, Americans find themselves locked in a monolingual society. How strange that, instead of viewing those who speak other languages as welcome assets to our nation, some seem eager to erase linguistic diversity. — David Miller Sadker

There are no drive-thru breakthroughs. Breakthroughs take time. — Joyce Meyer

All the breakthroughs and miracles you need are in people — Sunday Adelaja

Linden Lab's technological breakthroughs have made 'Second Life' a truly revolutionary experience. — Mitch Kapor

Focus on miracles or breakthrough makes a man to hope that he could reap where he has not sown. — Sunday Adelaja

Historic changes and challenges. Breakthroughs in human knowledge and opportunity. And yet, for vast numbers across the globe, the daily realities have not altered. — Abdallah II Of Jordan

In recent years, we have seen technology advance at lightning speed, allowing us to accomplish lifesaving feats never imagined before. It is our responsibility to ensure that these advances are used for positive medical breakthroughs, and not allowed to restrict rights or limit access to health insurance or job opportunities. — Evan Bayh

Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The 'smart' people don't. — Burt Rutan

The most important thing to do is to take risks. The risks are where breakthroughs happen, and big shifts take you to new places and create opportunities. They can be really scary and intimidating, but that means it is taking you out of your comfort zone. All designers look at life through a — Sophia Amoruso

We don't have time to wait for President Bush to change his mind. How many breakthroughs have been missed as a result of this policy? — Robert Lanza

My fascination is broadly with biology and the fact that our increased understanding of biology allows for breakthroughs in a broad set of diseases. — Bill Gates

The FDA, NCI and ACS, and the large treatment centres work to eliminate choice of cancer therapies, particulary better ones. They openly attack breakthroughs made by "mavericks", which they define as anyone outside their ranks. Folks, any serious study of how these entities work together to destroy hopeful approaches to cancer reveals a trail of corruption, conspiracy, dishonesty, and inhumanity that warrants desigantion of evil ... We continue to use them not because they work, but because those who perform them have so vigorously eliminated any other choice. — Julian Whitaker

I'm old enough to remember when the polio vaccine was still new. Also, it hadn't been that long since most people who caught pneumonia died from it. These medical breakthroughs were practically miracles. — Pat Cadigan

The most exciting breakthroughs of the 21st century will not occur because of technology but because of an expanding concept of what it means to be human. — John Naisbitt

I DECLARE breakthroughs are coming in my life, sudden bursts of God's goodness. Not a trickle. Not a stream. But a flood of God's power. A flood of healing. A flood of wisdom. A flood of favor. I am a breakthrough person and I choose to live breakthrough minded. I am expecting God to overwhelm me with His goodness and amaze me with His favor. This is my declaration. — Joel Osteen

Words for completely novel concepts and technical breakthroughs are devised as soon as needed, explained with ease and absorbed with scarcely an effort by all who need them. This ability to innovate in language is crucial to every scientific advance, to our intellectual curiosity, to our originality as human individuals, because it is crucial to our ability to communicate new ideas and discoveries. — Andrew Dalby

[ ... ] the biggest failures typically come before the biggest breakthroughs. That no matter what, I should never get discouraged. Learn from my mistakes and all will be well. — Joelle Charbonneau

When you realize that the real breakthroughs come from levels of higher consciousness, then you also realize that the achievement of maturity and wisdom is the most powerful generator of new beginnings possible. — Marianne Williamson

Breakthroughs happen when the insight comes that I can do something right now to improve things. I am constantly looking to do something to provide people with strategies to create those immediate breakthroughs. That's my mission. — Tony Robbins

Whatever the losses in warmth and comfort, the gains in space proved irresistible. So the development of the fireplace became one of the great breakthroughs in domestic history: they allowed people to lay boards across the beams and create a whole new world upstairs. — Bill Bryson

Here was a guy who had taken much of the Silicon Valley ethic behind moving quickly and running organizations free of bureaucratic hierarchies and applied it to improving big, fantastic machines and chasing things that had the potential to be real breakthroughs we'd been missing. — Ashlee Vance

We can be creative and generate new breakthroughs, if we're willing to work with ideas from the pool of history - both distant and more recent - despite the potential for our experiments to fail. — Doug Dawson

The greatest breakthrough's happens in the most difficult of times. Expect, believe and receive it. — Jeanette Coron

Real breakthroughs are not found because you want to develop some new technology, but because you are curious and want to find out how the world is. — Anton Zeilinger

The Internet has made some phenomenal breakthroughs that are still only poorly understood in terms of changing people's ideas of us and them. If mass media, social isolation in the suburbs, alienating workplaces and long car commutes create a bunker mentality, the Internet does the opposite. — Alex Steffen

And when something wasn't working, you changed it. Breakdowns lead to breakthroughs. — Chris Bohjalian

Like the railroads that bankrupted a previous generation of visionary entrepreneurs and built the foundations of an industrial nation, fiber-optic webs, storewidth breakthroughs, data centers, and wireless systems installed over the last five years will enable and endow the next generation of entrepreneurial wealth. As Mead states, "the hardest thing I ever had to do in my life was to get a company going during the bubble". Now, Mead says, "there's space available; you can get fab runs; you can get vendors to answer the phone. You can make deals with people; you can sit down and they don't spend their whole time telling you how they're a hundred times smarter than you. It's absolutely amazing. You can actually get work done now, which means what's happening now is that the entrepreneurs, the technologists, are building the next generation technology that isn't visible yet but upon which will be built the biggest expansion of productivity the world has ever seen. — George Gilder

Because of technological breakthroughs, the society will need fewer and fewer unskilled laborers. — Maya Angelou

If any lesson may be learned from the academic breakthroughs achieved by Pineapple and Jeremy, it is not that we should celebrate exceptionality of opportunity but that the public schools themselves in neighborhoods of widespread destitution ought to have the rich resources, small classes, and well-prepared and well-rewarded teachers that would enable us to give to every child the feast of learning that is now available to children of the poor only on the basis of a careful selectivity or by catching the attention of empathetic people like the pastor of a church or another grown-up whom they meet by chance. Charity and chance and narrow selectivity are not the way to educate children of a genuine democracy. — Jonathan Kozol

A "breakdown" is when you've exhausted every option and have no choice but to accept the fact that you are powerless to create the outcome you want.

A "breakthrough" has the same definition. — Paul Colaianni

If someone is always to blame, if every time something goes wrong someone has to be punished, people quickly stop taking risks. Without risks, there can't be breakthroughs. — Peter Diamandis

Recent breakthroughs in science show we have just the capacities we need to face our planet's challenges. We're "soft-wired" for cooperation, empathy, fairness, along with a deep need to "make a dent," as social philosopher Erich Fromm put it. My hunch is that one reason depression is a global pandemic is that the dominant mental map denies so many of us expression of these deep needs and capacities. — Frances Moore Lappe

A world without glass would strike at the foundation of modern progress: the extended lifespans that come from understanding the cell, the virus, and the bacterium; the genetic knowledge of what makes us human; the astronomer's knowledge of our place in the universe. No material on Earth mattered more to those conceptual breakthroughs than glass. — Steven Johnson

Two months in Shanghai, and what does she have to show for herself? She had been full of plans on the plane ride over, had studied her phrase book as if cramming for an exam, had been determined to refine her computational model with a new set of data, expecting insights and breakthroughs, plotting notes for a new article. Only the time has trickled away so quickly. She has meandered through the days chatting with James instead of gathering data. At night, she has gone out to dinners and bars. [James'] Chinese has not improved; her computational model has barely been touched. She does not know what she has been doing with herself, and now an airplane six days away is waiting for her. — Ruiyan Xu

It seemed to me that the real philosophical breakthroughs of the 20th century were in terms of the understanding of language. What is language? Where does it come from, how does it work, what does it do? — Hanif Kureishi

If the great story of the last century was the conflict among various political ideologies-communism, fascism and democracy-then the great narrative of this century will be the changes wrought by astonishing scientific breakthroughs — Cynthia Tucker

Chaos often fosters the greatest creativity. Breakdowns often precede the greatest breakthroughs. And when the pain is greatest is often when we're on the brink of the greatest realization ... When the pain is burned through rather than numbed, when our darkness is brought to light and then forgiven, then and only then can we move on. And move on we do. — Marianne Williamson

The jury had never been allowed to see any evidence that Laetrile actually worked. (Yes Virginia, they can bury medical breakthroughs in court this way also.) Dr. Kowan ... was ... age 70 ... — G. Edward Griffin

One of the big breakthroughs I had as a writer was when I stopped agonising over every word. — Alastair Reynolds

The big moments are the tiny moments. The breakthroughs are often silent, and they happen in the most unassuming places. — Jeff Goins

As the world's largest economy and second-largest carbon emitter, as a country with unsurpassed ability to drive innovation and scientific breakthroughs, as the country that people around the world continue to look to in times of crisis, we've got a vital role to play. We can't stand on the sidelines. We've got a unique responsibility. — Barack Obama

That's the key to walking through the Wall.... You have to first see it as not being a Wall, even though everyone you know still sees it as a Wall. — Kevin J. Shay

Chance throws peculiar conditions in everyone's way. If we apply intelligence, patience and special vision, we are rewarded with new creative breakthroughs. — Walter Bradford Cannon

Google is one of the most incredible breakthroughs that we have today. Yes, it can scare a lot of patients, thinking we're all dying because we look up something on Google. But there's also a lot of anecdotal information from parents, firsthand accounts of what they did for their own child. — Jenny McCarthy

We are all made good and positive declaration about the year 2015. We are all expecting breakthroughs in our lives, new things to happen to give us life changing. Guess what my friends, nothing is going to happen without action. We can't fold our hands and expect life changing or expect others to do it for us, that's impossible. The Bible says, 'God will bless you in all your work and in everything you put your hand to (Deut.15:10). That means whatever we are expecting to happen today has to come out of hands. God promotes hard work and hard work is honourable. — Euginia Herlihy

Most Web activities do not generate jobs and revenue at the rate of past technological breakthroughs. When Ford and General Motors were growing in the early part of the twentieth century, they created millions of jobs and helped build Detroit into a top-tier U.S. city. Today, Facebook creates a lot of voyeuristic pleasure, but the company doesn't employ many people and hasn't done much for Palo Alto; a lot of the "work" is performed more or less automatically by the software and the servers. You could say that the real work is done by its users, in their spare time and as a form of leisure. Web 2.0 is not filling government coffers or supporting many families, even though it's been great for users, programmers, and some information technology specialists. Everyone on the Web has heard of Twitter, but as of Fall 2010, only about three hundred people work there. — Tyler Cowen

Every generation's breakthroughs are proven false by the next generation's
Technology — Dan Brown

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know - not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot occur. I believe that managers must loosen the controls, not tighten them. They must accept risk; they must trust the people they work with and strive to clear the path for them; and always, they must pay attention to and engage with anything that creates fear. Moreover, successful leaders embrace the reality that their models may be wrong or incomplete. Only when we admit what we don't know can we ever hope to learn it. — Ed Catmull