Contraptions Quotes & Sayings

Im's offspring stare at stars and make clocks that calculate useless happenings like the angle of a hawk's claws as it strikes its prey. They demonstrate their contraptions and everyone marvels. My children get drunk, confuse a herd of cows with an enemy regiment, and slaughter the lot, screaming like lunatics until the entire army panics. — Ilona Andrews

Wallace and Gromit's contraptions are created purely for gags, but we all have the urge to invent - especially children. If they're bored, kids will make something from cardboard boxes, yoghurt pots, tape and elastic bands. Often, those constructions are the best. — Nick Park

My politics in a nutshell: let's stop giving corporations and newfangled contraptions what they need, and get back to giving human beings what we need. — Kurt Vonnegut

There was one floor that was all gynecologists. They could tell by the remnants of weird optical contraptions- all the convoluted tools men use when they're searching for the source of their anxieties. — Carl Watson

The rawness and the richness of music on vinyl almost went away, but it still seems to be on a lot of people's radar, and for good reason. It does something different than more accessible means of music playing, like MP3 players and downloads and whatnot. You get in front of these archaic contraptions that go 'round and 'round. — Billy Gibbons

What. Are. Thooooooose?" the walrus moaned.
On the holo-screen airing the happenings in Genevieve Square, a swarm of scorpspitters released by the Glass Eyes was scuttling toward Alyss and the other. Never before had a Wonderlander seen these scorpion-like contraptions that could bullets of deadly poison from their "tails"
not even Bibwit, who assumed they were the latest in a long line of armaments invented by Redd. But before a single scorpspitter curled its tail into a C to take aim at the queen, she imagined into existance a horde of disembodied boots with steel-plated soles, which hovered monetarily in the air, then
With a slight nod, she brought them down hard, stomping the scorpspitters flat, squishing their armor-crapaces and making absract art of their wiry guts.
Ooh, now why can't Queen Alyss do that to the Glass Eyes?" the walrus-bulter cried. — Frank Beddor

What are you typing?" Livia did not share Kyle's obsession with electronic contraptions. "Currently, I'm texting Debbi, Michelle, Karen, and Sam. This incident boosts my street cred." Kyle's text was in all caps. "Oh, pardon me. I didn't realize you were straight-up gangsta," Livia mocked. "Whatever. I had some bastard's finger in my mouth tonight. I'm milking this story for all it's worth." Kyle hit send. — Debra Anastasia

That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, I am simply a bird in their midst. — Erin Morgenstern

Most of the equipment in the gym looked like it belonged in Christian's "Red Room of Pain." I didn't think NYSC was a front for a BDSM club, so there must be another purpose behind the various contraptions; I was just clueless as to what that purpose was. — Genna Rulon

Time having transformed his own body into a storehouse for man-made contraptions designed to fend off collapse ... there was only our bodies, born to live and die on terms decided by the bodies that had lived and died before us. — Philip Roth

Observing others go through them, he used to admire midlife crises, the courage and shamelessness and existential daring of them, but after he'd watched his own wife, a respectable nursery school teacher, produce and star in a full-blown one of her own, he found the sufferers of such crises not only self-indulgent but greedy and demented, and he wished them all weird unnatural deaths with various contraptions easily found in garages. — Lorrie Moore

There is only one reason people have children: they're programmed to. Whatever reasons they may have for it - selflessness, wanting to pass something on, having so much love to give - I don't believe they choose children any more than naked mole rats decide to start tunneling. Human beings are basically big complicated Rube Goldberg contraptions constructed by genes to copy themselves, and only as an unintended side effect build mosques, make screwball comedies, and launch interplanetary probes. — Meghan Daum

I am not personally a parent. But I do have two godchildren and am expecting a third. I am naturally concerned for their future. If I ruled the world you could bet your boots that none of them would ever set their eyes on any such contraptions as digital clocks and pocket calculators. But alas, I do not rule the world and that, I am afraid, is the story of my life - always a godmother, never a God. — Fran Lebowitz

Neutrinos alone, among all the known particles, have ethereal properties that are striking and romantic enough both to have inspired a poem by John Updike and to have sent teams of scientists deep underground for 50 years to build huge science-fiction-like contraptions to unravel their mysteries. — Lawrence M. Krauss

It's the technology, see? We can't get away from it. Anywhere you find people, you find it. Clever little contraptions. Cunning strategies. We're toolmakers born and bred; and even if you don't believe in anything else, you'd better believe in that. Because that's human nature. — Daniel H. Wilson

Reliable people have been seeing the phenomenon known as flying saucers for a thousand years and more. There are good reports as far back as 1500 B.C. and before. Thousands of people have seen some kind of navigable contraptions in the sky, and some have sworn it under oath. — Morris K. Jessup

Invention consists in avoiding the constructing of useless contraptions and in constructing the useful combinations which are in infinite minority. — Henri Poincare

The James Bond movies and the comic books had it all wrong. You did not need elaborate contraptions, complicated plans, and futuristic doomsday weapons to wipe out of all of humankind. All you needed was a fully realized vision and an intense focus. All you needed to do is give a little push to what was already happening; what was inevitable.
All you had to do is get one group of people who believe in an invisible man in the sky to get really pissed off at another group of people who believe in a slightly different version of the same invisible man in the sky. — James J. Caterino

He wanted to fly in lightweight contraptions with her. — Dave Eggers

Then came the gadgeteer, otherwise known as the sporting-goods dealer. He has draped the American outdoorsman with an infinity of contraptions, all offered as aids to self-reliance, hardihood, woodcraft, or marksmanship, but too often functioning as substitutes for them. Gadgets fill the pockets, they dangle from neck and belt. The overflow fills the auto-trunk and also the trailer. Each item of outdoor equipment grows lighter and often better, but the aggregate poundage becomes tonnage. — Aldo Leopold

It's toys, boy, all toys. You'll see more and more contraptions as you get older, but if I teach you anything, you'll learn that all of this is decoration. What counts is what's inside you and what you can see in others. — Stefan Petrucha

My first encounter with science fiction was reading the work of H.G. Wells when I was nine or ten, and I don't believe 'The War of the Worlds' or 'The Time Machine' have ever been bettered. Plus, I have always had a liking for Victorian and Edwardian clothes and contraptions, which tends to color the worlds I dream up. — Philip Reeve

The West-march of the Walmart Held all the food in the world, Bottled beer by the boatload, Frost-kept food, milk and meat. Setting up for a siege behind barricades The Norsemen fetched food, collected clothing, Turkish trousers with flies in the front Kept closed with clever contraptions, Tiny — Neal Stephenson

When Sweetu wasn't being reduced to merely existing as a bride, as a piece of meat to be handled and prodded, to have decorative contraptions stuck into her skull, her interests were otherwise unexpressed. She rarely complained, hardly asked for anything, and maybe that's because Indian girls grow up going to weddings and we watch the procedure and we know our roles: be demure, don't complain, cry but don't scream, get tea for anyone older than you, and calmly meet expectations. — Scaachi Koul

Dr. S didn't notice. "Do you remember the cartoons of Rube Goldberg? An inventor of the most ludicrous contraptions. You know: a lever is pulled, causing a boot to kick a dog, whose bark motivates a hamster to run on a wheel which winds a pulley that raises a gate that releases a bowling ball and so on? Until, at the end, finally, the machine does something incredibly mundane, like making a piece of toast. Yes? Well, as it turns out, that's the world. All these incredibly complex, inscrutably intertwined Rube Goldberg machines that can only be seen in retrospect when something happens. — Adam Felber

I had made myself believe that the eyes are not the mirror of the soul. Some of the deadliest little female contraptions I ever saw had the faces and the eyes of angels. — John Steinbeck

When I lost my faith in people I put my trust in things To avoid the disappointment Trusting people brings ... I tried to do it all myself then Surrounded by my stuff All I found were limitations I could not rise above There are gadgets and contraptions Immaculate machines There's a program you can download now That will even dream your dreams It'll even dream you dreams For a monthly fee Clear up your complexion You get a hundred hours free Possessions cannot save you. — John Gorka

Not a single person in that audience believes for a second that what I do up there is real," he says, gesturing in the general direction of the stage. "That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, and I am simply a bird in their midst. The audience cannot tell the difference beyond knowing that I am better at it. — Erin Morgenstern

america...is the interplay of three hundred million rube goldberg contraptions invented only yesterday — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Music has generally involved a lot of awkward contraptions, a certain amount of heavy lifting. — Tom Waits

...unless our standards of civilization are comfort and contraptions, Athens from (say) 480 to 380 was clearly the most civilized society that has yet existed. — H.D.F. Kitto

A political organization is a transferable commodity. You could not find a better way of killing virtue than by packing it into one of these contraptions which some gang of thieves is sure to find useful. — John Jay Chapman