Important Invention Quotes & Sayings

The pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments; its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry. — George Bernard Shaw

I think the inner person is the most important ... I would like to see an invention that keeps the mind alert. That's what is important. — Julia Child

Creation is not a moment of inspiration but a lifetime of endurance. The drawers of the world are full of things begun. Unfinished sketches, pieces of invention, incomplete product ideas, notebooks with half-formulated hypotheses, abandoned patents, partial manuscripts. Creating is more monotony than adventure. It is early mornings and late nights: long hours doing work that will likely fail or be deleted or erased - a process without progress that must be repeated daily for years. Beginning is hard, but continuing is harder. Those who seek a glamorous life should not pursue art, science, innovation, invention, or anything else that needs new. Creation is a long journey where most turns are wrong and most ends are dead. The most important thing creators do is work. The most important thing they don't do is quit. The — Kevin Ashton

An announcement of [Christopher] Zeeman's lecture at Northwestern University in the spring of 1977 contains a quote describing catastrophe theory as the most important development in mathematics since the invention of calculus 300 years ago. — Stephen Smale

In every phase of the automotive industry, certain factors have been more important than all others in relation to the way the automobile has looked. Phase One is really the Ford story. Function and production were the most important considerations. The automobile was an invention, and it looked like one. — Raymond Loewy

It's once I discover the people inside that the story really gets going, and then the formal invention becomes less important. It's just the way in; it's the door; and then what's behind it is always some kind of people, which I think probably makes me more in the tradition of realistic fiction because that's usually what I'm interested in, the people. — Jess Walter

I happen to think that computers are the most important thing to happen to musicians since the invention of cat-gut which was a long time ago. — Robert Moog

The ape dreads death and will deal with this knowledge as bizarrely as we have? . . . The desired objective would be not only to communicate the knowledge of death but, more important, to find a way of making sure the apes' response would not be that of dread, which, in the human case, has led to the invention of ritual, myth, and religion. Until I can suggest concrete steps in teaching the concept of death without fear, I have no intention of imparting the knowledge of mortality to the ape. — Edward O. Wilson

The book. The book ... think about a book. What a perfect invention. The best and most important ever. — Jann Arden

The Revolution's most important result was Napoleon, whose most important result (as France learned in 1871, and again in 1914, and again in 1940) was the invention of Germany — George Will

Back then, I was still just a fan of music. And to be a fan of music also meant to be a fan of cities, of places. Regionalism - and the creative scenes therein - played an important role in the identification and contextualization of a sound or aesthetic. Music felt married to place, and the notion of "somewhere" predated the Internet's seeming invention of "everywhere" (which often ends up feeling like "nowhere") — Carrie Brownstein

Criticism is a study by which men grow important and formidable at very small expense. The power of invention has been conferred by nature upon few, and the labour of learning those sciences which may, by mere labour, be obtained, is too great to be willingly endured; but every man can exert some judgment as he has upon the works of others; and he whom nature has made weak, and idleness keeps ignorant, may yet support his vanity by the name of critic. — Samuel Johnson

Dr Maslow emphasizes that it is important to realize that: the knowledge revealed was there all the time, ready to be perceived, if only the perceiver were 'up to it', ready for it. This is a change in perspicuity, in the efficiency of the perceiver, in his spectacles, so to speak, not a change in the nature of reality or the invention of a new piece of reality which wasn't there before. (Maslow 1970, p.81) — Olga Bogdashina

The most important invention that will come out of the corporate research lab in the future will be the corporation itself. — John Seely Brown

Lastly, and doubtless always, but particularly at the end of the last century, certain scholars considered that since the appearances on our scale were finally the only important ones for us, there was no point in seeking what might exist in an inaccessible domain. I find it very difficult to understand this point of view since what is inaccessible today may become accessible tomorrow (as has happened by the invention of the microscope), and also because coherent assumptions on what is still invisible may increase our understanding of the visible. — Jean Baptiste Perrin

The idea was that you could grow a system like the Internet one network at a time and then interconnect them. In some sense, the most important thing was the invention of the architecture protocols that enabled the Internet. — Vint Cerf

People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water. — Akira Kurosawa

Creativity is one of the most important brain functions in developing youth. It is the ultimate road to invention. I believe it is really important to both nurture and encourage this in children - and adults, too! — Sarah Michelle Gellar

Invention is the most important product of man's creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs. — Nikola Tesla

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting. — Dave Barry

The war of ideas is a Greek invention. It is one of the most important inventions ever made. Indeed, the possibility of fighting with with words and ideas instead of fighting with swords is the very basis of our civilization, and especially of all its legal and parliamentary institutions. — Karl Popper

Love of science - unbounded patience in long reflecting over any subject - industry in observing and collecting facts - and a fair share of invention as well as of common sense. With such moderate abilities as I possess, it is truly surprising that I should have influenced to a considerable extent the belief of scientific men on some important points. — Charles Darwin

The impact of television on our culture is ... indescribable. There's a certain sense in which it is nearly as important as the invention of printing. — Carl Sandburg

Nothing is more important than to see the sources of invention which are, in my opinion, more interesting than the inventions themselves. — George Polya

it was not so much the new machines that revolutionized the world, impressive and important as they were. The truly heroic invention was the economic, social, and political institutions in which these machines were embedded. — Sven Beckert

The principle virtue of anyone who made an important invention is curious persistence. — Debasish Mridha

Remembering that I'll be dead soon is the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life.
Almost everything
all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure
these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important.
Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don't want to die to get there. And yet, death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it, and that is how it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It's life's change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. — Steve Jobs

The glass display cases had shown rock-throwers crafted by the Australian aborigines - like giant wooden shoehorns, they'd looked, but smoothed and carved and ornamented with the most painstaking care. In the 40,000 years since anatomically modern humans had migrated to Australia from Asia, nobody had invented the bow-and-arrow. It really made you appreciate how non-obvious was the idea of Progress. Why would you even think of Invention as something important, if all your history's heroic tales were of great warriors and defenders instead of Thomas Edison? How could anyone possibly have suspected, while carving a rock-thrower with painstaking care, that someday human beings would invent rocket ships and nuclear energy? — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Music and art are two very different activities for me. However, the use of imagery links them, and invention is important for both. — Ed Askew

The capital ... shall form a fund, the interest of which shall be distributed annually as prizes to those persons who shall have rendered humanity the best services during the past year ... One-fifth to the person having made the most important discovery or invention in the science of physics, one-fifth to the person who has made the most eminent discovery or improvement in chemistry, one-fifth to the one having made the most important discovery with regard to physiology or medicine, one-fifth to the person who has produced the most distinguished idealistic work of literature, and one-fifth to the person who has worked the most or best for advancing the fraternization of all nations and for abolishing or diminishing the standing armies as well as for the forming or propagation of committees of peace. — Alfred Nobel

For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal. — Kenneth Keniston

Whatever reader desires to have a thorough comprehension of an author's thoughts cannot take a better method than by putting himself into the circumstances and postures of life that the author was in upon every important passage as it flowed from his pen; for this will introduce a parity and strict correspondence of ideas between the reader and the author. Now, to assist the diligent reader in so delicate an affair, as far as brevity will permit, I have recollected that the shrewdest pieces of this treatise were conceived in bed in a garret; at other times (for a reason best known to myself) I thought fit to sharpen my invention with hunger; and in general, the whole work was begun, continued, and ended under a long course of physic and great want of money. — Jonathan Swift

I think future generations will see the invention of the Internet as having been as important as the invention of the printing press. It's the democratizing tool of all tools. As long as no one can control the flow of information, then freedom always has a chance. — Marianne Williamson

A genuine invention in the realm of ideas must first emerge as an abstruse and even partial concept? At first blusha new idea appearstobe verycloseto insanity because to be new it must reverse important basic beliefs and assumptions which, in turn, have been institutionalized and are administered by one or another kind of priesthood with a vested interest in an old idea. — Arthur Miller

I fear this little episode does not speak very favourably for my business capacity in those early days, for I certainly ought to have made much more than I did by this really important invention. — Henry Bessemer

It takes a thousand men to invent a telegraph, or a steam engine, or a phonograph, or a photograph, or a telephone or any other important thing - and the last man gets the credit and we forget the others. He added his little mite - that is all he did. These object lessons should teach us that ninety-nine parts of all things that proceed from the intellect are plagiarisms, pure and simple; and the lesson ought to make us modest. But nothing can do that. — Mark Twain

Just because a lot of people know something nominal doesn't make it important. A lot of people know what a pencil sharpener is, but that doesn't make it the most important invention of the 20th century. — Ben Affleck

Several of the inventions and discoveries which have made the modern world possible (the electric telegraph, the breech-loading gun, india-rubber, coal gas, wood-pulp paper) first appeared in Dickens's lifetime, but he scarcely notes them in his books. Nothing is queerer than the vagueness with which he speaks of Doyce's "invention" in Little Dorrit. It is represented as something extremely ingenious and revolutionary, "of great importance to his country and his fellow-creatures," and it is also an important minor link in the book; yet we are never told what the "invention" is! — George Orwell

And the invention of transformations of certain figures has become the most important in musical composition. — Karlheinz Stockhausen

The invention of the printing press was one of the most important events in human history. — Ha-Joon Chang

The quintessential exercise of free speech in a culture supposedly built on that concept and dedicated to it, the Internet's development is as historically important to humanity perhaps even more so as Gutenberg 's invention of the printing press. — L. Neil Smith

Welfare bureaucracies claim a professional, political, and financial monopoly over the social imagination, setting standards of what is valuable and what is feasible. This monopoly is at the root of the modernization of poverty. Every simple need to which an institutional answer is found permits the invention of a new class of poor and a new definition of poverty. Once basic needs have been translated by a society into demands for scientifically produced commodities, poverty is defined by standards which the technocrats can change at will. Poverty then refers to those who have fallen behind an advertised ideal of consumption in some important respect. — Ivan Illich

The appreciation of wine was based solely on the way it tasted. The invention of drinking glasses meant that the color, transparency, and clarity of wine became important, too. We are used to seeing what we drink, but this was new to the Romans, and they loved it. — Mark Miodownik

The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. — Nikola Tesla

Claiming that a little piece of green paper is more important than, say, the tree it's made from - even though that tree provides oxygen and absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Without the trees, we would all die out, but cash is an invention that is less than two thousand years old. — Bella Forrest

The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up. — Pam Houston

Some consider UNIX to be the second most important invention to come out of AT&T Bell Labs after the transistor. — Dennis Ritchie

So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it. — Chris Hadfield