Great Innovations Quotes & Sayings

Innovations succeed when failure is seen as a learning step to great success. — Pearl Zhu

Once an innovation reaches a certain level of popularity, its success is virtually assured. By the same token, great innovations can fail because the domino effect doesn't kick in.15 — Michael J. Mauboussin

Great innovations should not be forced on slender majorities. — Thomas Jefferson

I think one of the great innovations of sexual harassment law was that it did not use the word "consent." It used the word "welcome." — Gloria Steinem

Putting food under lock and key was one of the great innovations of your culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key - and putting it there is the cornerstone of your economy.[ ... ] Because if the food wasn't under lock and key, Julie, who would work? — Daniel Quinn

A policing of sex: that is, not the rigor of a taboo, but the necessity of regulating sex through useful and public discourses. A few examples will suffice. One of the great innovations in the techniques of power in the eighteenth century was the emergence of "population" as an economic and political problem: population as wealth, population as manpower or labor capacity, population balanced between its own growth and the resources it commanded. Governments perceived that they were not dealing simply with subjects, or even with a "people," but with a "population," with its specific phenomena and its peculiar variables: birth and death rates, life expectancy, fertility, state of health, frequency of illnesses, patterns of diet and habitation. — Michel Foucault

Men's consciences ought in no sort to be violated, urged, or constrained. And whenever men have attempted any thing by this violent course, whether openly or by secret means, the issue has been pernicious, and the cause of great and wonderful innovations in the principallest and mightiest kingdoms and countries ... — Roger Williams

I think all great innovations are built on rejections. — Louise Berliawsky Nevelson

In order to prevent self-interest and ill-conceived projects, and all such dangerous innovations as finally ruined the Athenians, each man should not be at liberty to propose new laws at pleasure; this right should belong exclusively to the magistrates.... It is above all the great antiquity of the laws which makes them sacred and venerable; men soon learn to despise laws which they see daily altered; and states, by accustoming themselves to neglect their ancient customs under the pretext of improvement, often introduce greater evils than those they endeavor to remove.109 — Will Durant

We created the spirituals. We created so much great music, jazz chief amongst our innovations, teaching us how to prize ourselves and how to speak to one another, that our kids don't know that achievement, there's no way in the world that could be good for us. — Wynton Marsalis

The millions currently trapped in poverty and despair are a tremendous untapped resource. Just think of what it would mean for America to gain full use of the talents and abilities of all her people. They would develop new innovations to improve our lives, or help build the next great American company. — Marco Rubio

I'm an investor in a number of biotech companies, partly because of my incredible enthusiasm for the great innovations they will bring. — Bill Gates

Though determinants and matrices received a great deal of attention in the nineteenth century and thousands of papers were written on these subjects, they do not constitute great innovations in mathematics ... Neither determinants nor matrices have influenced deeply the course of mathematics despite their utility as compact expressions and despite the suggestiveness of matrices as concrete groups for the discernment of general theorems of group theory ... — Morris Kline

So many people have that kind of attitude and approach to learning that it gives me great hope for the world. I say hope in the sense that innovations in science and technology will be the engines of a 21st century economy and I don't want to go broke, as a nation. So, the hope I have is that, if people embrace it, we'll have a healthier, more secure, wealthier nation than we have. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

For all great innovations, someone took a risk. They risked capital; they risked their energy; they risked their opportunity cost; and more important, they risked failure. We can't innovate without the belief that we can succeed, the confidence that others will be there to help us on the journey, and the security that we will not be punished if we fail to reach our goal. A fast-moving world demands innovation for long-term success. — Dov Seidman

In fact, most of the great human innovations of the last few centuries happened under elvin tutelage. Electricity. Penicillin. Chocolate cake. — Shannon Messenger

What you end up seeing when you look at history is that people who have been good at pushing the boundaries of possibility, and exploring those frontiers of good ideas and innovations, have rarely done it in moments of great inspiration. They don't just have a brilliant breakthrough idea out of nowhere and leap ahead of everyone else. — Steven Johnson

Great innovations, powerful interactions and real art are often produced by someone in a state of wonder. Looking around with stars in your eyes and amazement at the tools that are available to you can inspire generosity and creativity and connection — Seth Godin

The lines between these seven source areas of innovative opportunities are blurred, and there is considerable overlap between them. They can be likened to seven windows, each on a different side of the same building. Each window shows some features that can also be seen from the window on either side of it. But the view of the centre of each is distinct and different. The seven sources require separate analysis, for each has its own distinct characteristic. No area is, however, inherently more important or more productive than the other. Major innovations are as likely to come out of an analysis of symptoms of change (such as the unexpected success of what was considered an insignificant change in product or pricing) as they are to come out of the massive application of new knowledge resulting from a great scientific breakthrough. — Peter F. Drucker

The money to fund great things and innovations and programs is gone in our lifetime; it's all gone to debt. So we won't be able to solve global warming or have the transportation that we needed for the 21st century. We should be supporting people with great ideas, but it's gone, and now it's gotta be paid back with interest to banks in China. — Michael Moore

Our fine arts were developed, their types and uses were established, in times very different from the present, by men whose power of action upon things was insignificant in comparison with ours. But the amazing growth of our techniques, the adaptability and precision they have attained, the ideas and habits they are creating, make it a certainty that profound changes are impending in the ancient craft of the Beautiful. In all the arts there is a physical component which can no longer be considered or treated as it used to be, which cannot remain unaffected by our modern knowledge and power. For the last twenty years neither matter nor space nor time has been what it was from time immemorial. We must expect great innovations to transform the entire technique of the arts, thereby affecting artistic invention itself and perhaps even bringing about an amazing change in our very notion of art. — Paul Valery

Making food a commodity to be owned was one of the great innovations of our culture. No other culture in history has ever put food under lock and key - and putting it there is the cornerstone of our economy, for if the food wasn't under lock and key, who would work? — Daniel Quinn

When I returned as CEO in 2008, Starbucks had forgotten that meaningful innovations balance an organization's heritage with modern-day relevance and market differentiation, so we had to reorient. In one brainstorming session, we visited and observed great retailers, then asked ourselves, 'If Starbucks did not exist, what type of coffee experience would we create? — Howard Schultz

The formal innovations of the great masters always have a certain discreetness about them; such is true perfection; only among the small masters does novelty seek to call attention to itself. — Milan Kundera