Devised Quotes & Sayings

In fact, these terms devised by Franklin are the ones we still use today, along with other neologisms that he coined to describe his findings: battery, charged, neutral, condense, and conductor. — Walter Isaacson

We are apt to be deluded into false security by political catch-words, devised to flatter rather than instruct. — James A. Garfield

I cannot accept this invitation [to celebrate the bicentenial of the Constitution], for I do not believe that the meaning of the Constitution was forever 'fixed' at the Philadelphia Convention ... To the contrary, the government they devised was defective from the start. [Progressive] — Thurgood Marshall

This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny. — Robert Benchley

What I am recommending to the unmarried person, therefore, comes straight out of the Word: Stay out of bed unless you go there alone! I know that advice is difficult to put into practice today. But I didn't make the rules. I'm just passing them along. God's moral laws are not designed to oppress us or deprive us of pleasure. They are there to protect us from the devastation of sin, including disease, heartache, divorce, and spiritual death. Abstinence before marriage and fidelity afterward is the Creator's own plan, and no one has devised a way to improve on it. — James C. Dobson

No form or combination of social polity has yet been devised to make an energetic people out of a community of pusillanimous and enfeebled citizens. — Alexis De Tocqueville

Hezekiah Pendergast," Constance continued, "was the great-great-grandfather of Aloysius - and a first-rate mountebank. He began his career as a snake-oil salesman for traveling medicine shows and, over time, devised his own 'medicine': Hezekiah's Compound Elixir and Glandular Restorative. — Douglas Preston

Philosophy is this amazing technique we've devised for getting reality to answer us back when we're getting it wrong. Science itself can't make those arguments. You actually have to rely on philosophy, on philosophy of science. — Rebecca Goldstein

If anyone offers conjectures about the truth of things from the mere possibility of hypotheses, I do not see by what stipulation anything certain can be determined in any science, since one or another set of hypotheses may always be devised which will appear to supply new difficulties. — Isaac Newton

Even with all its positive attributes, capitalism in its imperialistic form is the most treacherous system mankind ever devised. It is driven by a selfishness that has an almost religious underlining to it. — Janvier Chouteu-Chando

Put away these frozenjawed primates and their annals of ways beset and ultimate dark. What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This gawky wormbent tabernacle. — Cormac McCarthy

History, human or geological, represents our hypothesis, couched in terms of past events, devised to explain our present-day observations. — M. King Hubbert

All doctrines relating to the creation of the world, the government of man by superior beings, and his destiny after death, are conjectures which have been given out as facts, handed down with many adornments by tradition, and accepted by posterity as "revealed religion". They are theories more or less rational which uncivilised men have devised in order to explain the facts of life, and which civilised men believe that they believe. — William Winwood Reade

I would rather quit public life at seventy, and quit it forever, than to retain public life at a sacrifice to my own self-respect. I will not vote for any law which will make fair for me and foul for another. The blacklist is the most cruel form of oppression ever devised by man for the infliction of suffering upon his weaker fellows. — Joseph Gurney Cannon

He had spent a lifetime cleansing his mind of poison. He had searched his heart, found the corruption, and removed it. He had torn away the lies - lies he'd been told and had believed, and lies he had devised and used against himself. This was his mastery - the purification of the mind and the recovery of authenticity. This scene symbolized the mastery of death, the awakening. — Miguel Ruiz

Keynes declared capitalism the best system ever devised to achieve a civilized economic society. But he recognized in it two major faults - its failure to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes. — Robert B. Reich

We are all equally rich when it comes to the currency of time: 24 hours in a day and not one iota more. It is one of life's most level playing fields, ever devised, from the standpoint of a singular day. — Garry Fitchett

The nonexistence of God makes more difference to some of us than to others. To me, it means that there is no absolute morality, that moralities are sets of social conventions devised by humans to satisfy their needs. — Bertrand Russell

I stand on this rostrum with a sense of deep humility and great pride - humility in the weight of those great American architects of our history who have stood here before me; pride in the reflection that this home of legislative debate represents human liberty in the purest form yet devised. — Douglas MacArthur

While photographs certainly attest to Nazi crimes, the magnitude of Nazi genocide demands that every trace of the regime be forever remembered. The various symbols devised by the Nazi image-makers for the most sophisticated visual identity of any nation are a vivid reminder of the systematic torture and murder engaged in by this totalitarian state. These pictures, signs, and emblems are not merely clip art for contemporary designers to toy with as they please, but evidence of crimes against humanity. — Steven Heller

I saw now that love could not be stopped, forgotten, or transferred, no matter what schemes the mind and body devised. — Wendy Higgins

No torture has yet been devised that could get a liberal to mention the poor, beleaguered Kurds dancing in the streets because Saddam is gone. — Ann Coulter

Keep your head down, think small, look after yourself: these constituted the lessons of Leopold. The spirit, once comprehensively crushed, does not recover easily. For seventy-five years, from 1885 to 1960, Congo's population had marinated in humiliation. No malevolent witch-doctor could have devised a better preparation for the coming of a second Great Dictator. — Michela Wrong

To achieve these Jeffersonian ends, Alexander Hamilton - Jefferson's philosophical rival - devised an ingenious strategy that entailed a strong manufacturing base, a national banking system, a centralized federal government, and an export-led economic scheme protected by the U.S. Navy. — Patrick Mendis

Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away. — Carl Sagan

I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything but it came at some time; no matter at how distant a day, somehow, in some shape, probably the least I would have devised, it came. — Adoniram Judson

In the Democratic primary in 2008, the Obama team devised a strategy to use the caucuses and a complicated system of awarding delegates in the state primaries to sneak up on Hillary Clinton and establish a lead Obama never surrendered. — John Podhoretz

I never was deeply interested in any object; I never prayed sincerely and earnestly for anything, but it came at some time - no matter how distant, in some way, in some shape, probably the last I should have devised, it came. And yet, I have always had so little faith. God forgive me. — Adoniram Judson

The aim of far too many teachings these days is to make people "feel good," and even some Buddhist masters are beginning to sound like New Age apostles. Their talks are entirely devoted to validating the manifestation of ego and endorsing the "rightness" of our feelings, neither of which have anything to do with the teachings we find in the pith instructions. So, if you are only concerned about feeling good, you are far better off having a full body massage or listening to some uplifting or life-affirming music than receiving dharma teachings, which were definitely not designed to cheer you up. On the contrary, the dharma was devised specifically to expose your failings and make you feel awful. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Besides its content and methods, the cuisine devised by squaws and hillbilly women, as well as slave women, had another thing in common, which was the belief that you made do with whatever you could lay hands on
pigs' entrails, turnip tops, cowpeas, terrapins, catfish
anything that didn't bite you first. — Shirley Abbott

The CD, it should be noted, was born out of greed. It was devised to prop up record sales on the expectation of people replenishing their record collections with CDs of albums they had already purchased. — John Mellencamp

We have a strong and credible broadband policy because the man who has devised it, the man who will implement it virtually invented the Internet in this country. Thank you so much, Malcolm Turnbull. — Tony Abbott

I prove the supreme law of Gods and sky,
And the primordial germs of things unfold,
Whence Nature all creates, and multiplies
And fosters all, and whither she resolves
Each in the end when each is overthrown.
This ultimate stock we have devised to name
Procreant atoms, matter, seeds of things,
Or primal bodies, as primal to the world. — Lucretius

It took centuries of intellectual, philosophical development to achieve political freedom. It was a long struggle, stretching from Aristotle to John Locke to the Founding Fathers. The system they established was not based on unlimited majority rule, but on its opposite: on individual rights, which were not to be alienated by majority vote or minority plotting. The individual was not left at the mercy of his neighbors or his leaders: the Constitutional system of checks and balances was scientifically devised to protect him from both. — Ayn Rand

The more he saw, the more he doubted. He watched men narrowly, and saw how, beneath the surface, courage was often rashness; and prudence, cowardice; generosity, a clever piece of calculation; justice, a wrong; delicacy, pusillanimity; honesty, a modus vivendi; and by some strange dispensation of fate, he must see that those who at heart were really honest, scrupulous, just, generous, prudent or brave were held cheaply by their fellow-men.
'What a cold-blooded jest!' said he to himself. 'It was not devised by a God.'
From that time forth he renounced a better world, and never uncovered himself when a Name was pronounced, and for him the carven saints in the churches became works of art — Honore De Balzac

We'd even devised the Buffy scale of life relationships: you start off wanting Xander, spend your twenties going out with Spike and setttle down with giles. — Jenny Colgan

Time is a convenient filing system human beings have devised to segregate their experiences. — Frederick Lenz

You know that the beginning is the most important part of any work, especially in the case of a young and tender thing; for that is the time at which the character is being formed and the desired impression is more readily taken ... Shall we just carelessly allow children to hear any casual tales which may be devised by casual persons, and to receive into their minds ideas for the most part the very opposite of those which we should wish them to have when they are grown up?
We cannot ... Anything received into the mind at that age is likely to become indelible and unalterable; and therefore it is most important that the tales which the young first hear should be models of virtuous thoughts ... — Plato

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

Even the best educational computer programs and games, devised with the help of the best educators, contain a tiny fraction of the outcomes of a single child equipped with a crayon and paper. A child's limitless imagination can only do what the computer allows them to, and no more. The best toys, by contrast, are really 10 percent toy and 90 percent child: paint, cardboard, sand. The kid's brain does the heavy lifting, and in the process it learns. — David Sax

In the 'in-itself' there is nothing of 'causal connections', of 'necessity', or of 'psychological non-freedom'; there the effect does not follow the cause, there is no rule or 'law'. It is we alone who have devised cause, sequence, for-each-other, relativity, constraint, number, law, freedom, motive, and purpose; and when we project and mix this symbol world into things as if it existed 'in itself', we act once more as we have always acted- mythologically. — Friedrich Nietzsche

What is it but a cunningly devised scheme to take from one State and to give to another - to replenish the treasury of some of the States from the pockets of the people of the others; in reality, to make them support the governments and pay the debts of other States as well as their own? — John C. Calhoun

Nnu Ego was like those not-so well-informed Christians who,promised the Kingdom of Heaven,believed that it was literally just round the corner and that Jesus Christ was coming on the very morrow. Many of them would hardly contribute anything ton this world,reasoning, "What is the use? Christ will come soon" They became so insulated in their beliefs that not only would they have little to do with ordinary sinners,people going about their daily work, they even pitied them and in many cases looked down on them because the Kingdom of God was not for the likes of them. Maybe this was a protective mechanism devised to save them from realities too painful to accept. — Buchi Emecheta

Calculus is the most powerful weapon of thought yet devised by the wit of man. — Wallace B. Smith

I thought it such a shame that our culture had not devised a way to defang old age. A sophisticated civilization wouldn't ridicule senility, it would elevate it, worship it, wouldn't it? We would train ourselves to see poetry in the nonsense of dementia, to actually look forward to becoming so untethered from the world. We'd make a ceremony of casting off our material goods and confining ourselves to a single room, leaving all our old, abandoned space to someone new, someone young, so that we could die alone, indifferent to our own decay and lost beauty. (127 — Timothy Schaffert

We should learn from the snail: it has devised a home that is both exquisite and functional. — Frank Lloyd Wright

2PE1.16 For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 2PE1.17 For he received from God the Father honour and glory, when there came such a voice to him from the excellent glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. 2PE1.18 And this voice which came from heaven we heard, when we were with him in the holy mount. — Anonymous

AM said it with the sliding cold horror of a razor blade slicing my eyeball. AM
said it with the bubbling thickness of my lungs filling with phlegm, drowning me from within. AM said it with the shriek of babies being ground beneath blue-hot rollers. AM said it with the taste of maggoty pork. AM touched me in every way I had ever been touched, and devised new ways, at his leisure, there inside my mind. — Harlan Ellison

Inner peace - you need to know who you are, what you want out of life. You have to do your own thinking, and for that you better know who you are, and not just know but be secure in it, comfortable with yourself. Plus you gotta have discipline. Stamina. And luck sure helps. A little luck counts for a lot, including our great good luck of being born into the greatest economic system ever devised. It's not a perfect system by any means, but overall it's responsible for tremendous human progress. In just the past century alone, we've seen something like a seven-to-one improvement in the standard of living. I'm not saying we don't have problems, we've got a helluva lot of problems, but that's where the genius of the free market comes in, all the drive and talent and energy that goes into solving those problems. — Ben Fountain

The wisdom of God devised a way for the love of God to deliver sinners from the wrath of God while not compromising the righteousness of God. — John Piper

Seriously. A man categorically devised the high heal and he did it in an attempt to make it easier for you dudes to rugby tackle us womenfolk to the ground and haul us back to your beds. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

Was to filter hair tonic through bread and then mix it with grape juice. Like virtually every other drink devised in the Pacific, it was known as Jungle Juice. — Stephen E. Ambrose

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man. — Mahatma Gandhi

Violence is a personal necessity for the oppressed ... It is not a strategy consciously devised. It is the deep, instinctive expression of a human being denied individuality. — Richard Wright

I think by far the most important bill in our whole code is that for the diffusion of knowlege among the people. no other sure foundation can be devised for the preservation of freedom, and happiness. — Thomas Jefferson

You wish to hear the origin story?" "Uh, yes." I passed him the bottle. "Very well." He drank, handing it to Jack, starting another round. "A goddess of magic devised a contest to the death for select mortals. She invited deities of other realms to send a representative from their most prestigious house, all youths. Each one bore their god's emblem upon his or her right hand." My heart raced . . . I had been one of those youths. "These players would fight inside Tar Ro, a sacred realm as large as a thousand kingdoms, harvesting their victims' emblems; only the player who'd collected them all would leave Tar Ro alive. Naturally, the gods cheated, gifting their own representative with superhuman abilities, making them more than mortal. Secret abilities. That's why we're called Arcana." "Hail Tar Ro," I murmured. "The High Priestess told me that." "An old-fashioned greeting. She's quite knowledgeable about the games. Very respectful of the old ways. — Kresley Cole

Investors, monarchies, and parliamentarians devised methods to control the processes of wealth accumulation and the power that came with it, but the ideology behind gold fever mobilized settlers to cross the Atlantic to an unknown fate. Subjugating entire societies and civilizations, enslaving whole countries, and slaughtering people village by village did not seem too high a price to pay, nor did it appear inhumane. The systems of colonization were modern and rational, but its ideological basis was madness. — Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz

And ongoing embrace of his incarnate Son as perfectly righteous, to be honored accordingly, embraces us with him, for his sake, by virtue of what he has done for us. This, then, is the divinely devised method of our reconciliation, as Paul sets it forth. THE MESSENGERS OF RECONCILIATION Paul speaks repeatedly of the messengers of this reconciliation. Observe the following statements: God ... gave us the ministry of reconciliation ... entrusting — J.I. Packer

It has been observed, [that for the federal government] to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. — Alexander Hamilton

Meanwhile, an article in the September issue of the popular McClure's Magazine written by Simon Newcomb, a distinguished astronomer and professor at Johns Hopkins University, dismissed the dream of flight as no more than a myth. And were such a machine devised, he asked, what useful purpose could it possibly serve? — David McCullough

Sunday, with its immunity from work, was devised for slaves who got out of all the work they could during the week. — Elbert Hubbard

I hope, too, that my book will illuminate my belief that love of art - be it poetry, storytelling, painting, sculpture, or music - enables people to transcend any barrier man has yet devised. — Mary Ann Shaffer

This man, I say, is most perfect who shall have understood everything for himself, after having devised what may be best afterward and unto the end. — Hesiod

My favourite fellow of the Royal Society is the Reverend Thomas Bayes, an obscure 18th-century Kent clergyman and a brilliant mathematician who devised a complex equation known as the Bayes theorem, which can be used to work out probability distributions. It had no practical application in his lifetime, but today, thanks to computers, is routinely used in the modelling of climate change, astrophysics and stock-market analysis. — Bill Bryson

It is because gold is rare that gilding has been invented, which, without having its solidity, has all its brilliancy. Thus, to replace the kindness we lack, we have devised politeness which has all its appearance. — Francis De Gaston, Chevalier De Levis

If Christianity gave rise to science between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries, then you could give religion credit for everything that humans devised in that period. — Jerry A. Coyne

The trick was really finding the appropriate publisher for each of the projects I'd devised. — Mark Millar

The mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity. — Edward Clodd

Once upon a time ... the only autonomous intelligences we humans knew of were us humans. We thought then that if humankind ever devised another intelligence that it would be the result of a huge project ... a great mass of silicon and ancient transistors and chips and circuit boards ... a machine with lots of networking circuits, in other words, aping-if you will pardon the expression-the human brain in form and function. Of course, AIs did not evolve that way. They sort of slipped into existence when we humans were looking the other way. — Dan Simmons

Why was it given to Darwin, less ambitious, less imaginative, and less learned than many of his colleagues, to discover the theory sought after by others so assiduously? How did it come about that one so limited intellectually and insensitive culturally should have devised a theory so massive in structure and sweeping in significance? — Robert Wright

The fundamental problem is that every technology embeds the ideologies of its creators! Who made the Internet? The military! The Internet is the product of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency! We call it DARPA for short! Who worked for DARPA? DARPA was a bunch of men! Not a single woman worked on the underlying technologies that fuel our digital universe! Men are the shit of the world and all of our political systems and philosophies were created and devised without the input of women! Half of the world's population lives beneath systems of government and technological innovation into which their gender had zero input! Democracy is a bullshit ideology that a bunch of slaveholding Greek men constructed between rounds of beating their wives! All the presumed ideologies of men were taken for inescapable actualities and designed into the Internet! Packet switching is an incredible evil! — Jarett Kobek

Beyond the personal discomfort, her larger point was that women aren't going to achieve social equality until some technological alternative is invented to save us from being the only sex expected to go through it. If men were the ones forced to endure this ordeal, obviously such a technological solution would long ago have been devised. — Laura Kipnis

Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.
They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'
Asger Jorn — Tom McDonough

INTRODUCTION The Puzzling Puzzles of Harry Harlow and Edward Deci In the middle of the last century, two young scientists conducted experiments that should have changed the world - but did not. Harry F. Harlow was a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin who, in the 1940s, established one of the world's first laboratories for studying primate behavior. One day in 1949, Harlow and two colleagues gathered eight rhesus monkeys for a two-week experiment on learning. The researchers devised a simple mechanical puzzle like the one pictured on the next page. Solving it required three steps: pull out the vertical pin, undo the hook, and lift the hinged cover. Pretty easy for you and me, far more challenging for a thirteen-pound — Daniel H. Pink

Christmas is not something that sprang from the musings of some person who creatively devised caricatures of elves, spiraling candy canes, visions of a magical city whose foundation was nestled in the far reaches of the North Pole, or embellishments of a kindly bishop spun by myth into a bearded old man in a red suit. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

They devised such useful tools, skills, and techniques as the potter's wheel, the wagon wheel, the plow, the sailboat, the arch, the vault, the dome, casting in copper and bronze, riveting, brazing and soldering, sculpture — Samuel Noah Kramer

Because thou hast plundered many nations, all the remnant of the peoples shall plunder thee, because of men's blood, and for the violence done to the land, to the city and to all that dwell therein. 9 Woe to him that getteth an evil gain for his house, that he may set his nest on high, that he may be delivered from the hand of evil! 10 Thou hast devised shame to thy house, by cutting off many peoples, and hast sinned against thy soul. 11 For the stone shall cry out of the wall, and the beam out of the — Anonymous

People are so tired. The world is set up to exhaust you and drain you. That's how humankind has devised their world. Life is not necessarily that way — Frederick Lenz

No teaching that is not based on reason can be tolerated by critical minds, but the belief that an accident of blind force produces this highly organized world is far more fantastic than the theory that a Super Intelligence devised its ordered evolution. — Alice Hegan Rice

He was either stout or portly, wealthy enough that a vocabulary had been devised to conceal his girth. — Renee Patrick

The Ten Commandments are the greatest list of instructions ever devised for creating a good society. But such a society cannot be created or maintained if it is not based on truth. — Dennis Prager

The fractal structure nature has devised works so efficiently that, in most tissue, no cell is ever more than three or four cells away from a blood vessel. Yet the vessels and blood take up little space, no more than about five percent of the body. — James Gleick

Golf is the most useless outdoor game ever devised to waste the time and try the spirit of man. — Westbrook Pegler

I devised a test.
I turned off the TV and instantly the snoring stopped. She began to move. When I felt her eyes about to open, I turned the TV back on and back to sleep she went. Then I'd turn it off and on - sometimes for millisecond - and she never failed me. Each time it was off, she's move and mutter - each time it was on, she'd sleep.
By the time the headlights from Amy's Nova turned into our driveway, my suspicion had been confirmed. My mother has a more intimate, connected relationship with this television than she has ever had with me. — Peter Hedges

Christmas was an intentionally intentional decision of the greatest sort ever devised that would result in the greatest cost ever conceived; God would die. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

At school, there was an annual school disco and I'd be standing in my bedroom wondering what to wear for hours on end. Eventually I'd arrive at a decision that was just the most ridiculous costume you could have ever devised - I think it was probably knitted Christmas jumpers on top of buttoned-up white shirts. — Guy Berryman

We no longer have a sufficiently high estimate of ourselves when we communicate. Our true experiences are not garrulous. They could not communicate themselves if they wanted to: they lack words. We have already grown beyond whatever we have words for. In all talking there lies a grain of contempt. Speech, it seems, was devised only for the average medium, communicable. The speaker has already vulgarized himself by speaking. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Now, at the end of three years struggle the nation's condition is not what either party, or any man devised, or expected. God alone can claim it. — Abraham Lincoln

Paraphrasing: An old man claimed to be a psychic. The boy devised a plan to capture a bird, and ask the old man if the bird in his hands was dead or alive. Then he would crush it or let the bird fly, either way proving the man a fraud. So he said, "Tell me old man, is the bird alive or dead?" The wise old man looked at the boy and said, "The bird is as you choose it to be. — Michael Hyatt

A public-school system, if it means the providing of free education for those who desire it, is a noteworthy and beneficent achievement of modern times; but when once it becomes monopolistic it is the most perfect instrument for tyranny which has yet been devised. Freedom of thought in the middle ages was combated by the Inquisition, but the modern method is far more effective.' (1923) — J. Gresham Machen

The "gravity train" was devised in the seventeenth century by British scientist Robert Hooke, who presented the idea in a letter to Isaac Newton. The idea has been seriously presented a few times, such as to the Paris Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century. — Stephen Baxter

In whatever system where the weight attached to the wheel should be the cause of motion of the wheel, without any doubt the center of the gravity of the weight will stop beneath the center of its axle. No instrument devised by human ingenuity, which turns with its wheel, can remedy this effect. Oh, speculators about perpetual motion, how many vain chimeras have you created in the like quest. Go and take you place with the seekers after gold. — Leonardo Da Vinci

Abstinence-only education - the best STD (Sexually Transmitted Disease) and pregnancy delivery system that politicians have ever devised. — Rachel Maddow

A system could not well have been devised more studiously hostile to human happiness than marriage. — Percy Bysshe Shelley

Now let me ask my countrymen, Have you ever granted a moment's thought to this very vital problem in the building of our nation ? Have you devised any practical remedies to combat this evil ? Will you, my countrymen, go on without making any intelligent effort to lay the axe at the root of this weaknss and misery ? Will you allow the noted chivalry and the noble hardihood of the Indian to sink into oblivion ? Will you make it a thing entirely of the past ? I implore you, I beseech you, I exhort you my brethren in the name of all that is dearest to you to shake off the lethargy, to show to this world that you were sleeping the sleep of lions only, to rise again with redoubled energy and courage to take the work of rebuilding your nation in right earnest. — Kodi Rammurthy Naidu

That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and the cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. — C.S. Lewis

You can look at history of these things, and Social Security wasn't devised to be a system that supported you for a 30-year retirement after a 25-year career ... So there will be things that, you know, the retirement age has to be changed, maybe some of the benefits have to be affected, maybe some of the inflation adjustments have to be revised. — Lloyd Blankfein

The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I wonder what book signings will be like when most of the books we read are electronic. Will authors sign something else? A flyer, perhaps? A special kind of card devised for the purpose? — Susan Orlean

Many too many are born: for the superfluous ones was the state devised! — Friedrich Nietzsche