Mousetrap Quotes & Sayings

If you build a better mousetrap, Nature will build a better mouse. — Lawrence Block

Playing Sgt, Trotter in 'The Mousetrap' is the same as playing Scripps in 'The History Boys,' in the sense that they're dream roles that I've always wanted to do. The fact they're letting me do this professionally and I'm getting paid for it, I find astonishing. — Thomas Howes

Jiu Jitsu is a mousetrap. The trap does not chase the mouse. But when the mouse grabs the cheese, the trap plays its role. — Helio Gracie

The object of learning was not to build a better mousetrap but to ask a better question. — Julius Lester

The first thing he noticed was that Las Vegas seemed to have invented a new school of functional architecture, 'The Gilded Mousetrap School' he thought it might be called, whose main purpose was to channel the customer-mouse into the central gambling trap whether he wanted the cheese or not. — Ian Fleming

We trigger each other, it seems, some dysfunctional Rube Goldberg mousetrap, a laugh, then a slap, a razor gliding over a mirror, a glass filled, a glass emptied, a ball rolling down a length of pipe, a pipe filling up and overflowing with smoke. On our best days, we see each other for all that we are, and we find a way to make each other better. — Richard Thomas

If you build a better mousetrap, you will catch better mice. — George Gobel

You see a mousetrap; I see free cheese and a fucking challenge! — Scroobius Pip

There's always free cheddar in the mousetrap, baby. — Tom Waits

[Love] feels . . ." I paused, turning the highlighter in my hand, "like an awakening of senses you never knew you had, and once they're awakened, you're never the same. The way you see the world is altered. Instead of riding down a road on your bike and thinking how the wind feels good on your face, you think, 'This is how it feels when he kisses my cheek.' You play a piece on the piano, and instead of imagining a crowd applauding, you only see him, sitting in the chair next to the piano, smiling at you. You catch the scent of sage in the air and think, 'This is how he smells.' But it's also kind of like being on a mousetrap ride. Exhilarating and terrifying all at the same time. You smile and laugh and feel a thrill inside of you, all the while wondering in the back of your mind if the car will come off the track at the next turn, or if your harness will come open and you will be tossed to the ground to your death. — Sarah Beard

A virtuous girl never chases after boys; who ever saw a mousetrap chasing mice? — Julian Tuwim

Whenever man comes up with a better mousetrap, nature immediately comes up with a better mouse. — James D. Carswell

As for myself: I had come to the conclusion that there was nothing sacred about myself or any human being, that we were all machines, doomed to collide and collide and collide. For want of anything better to do, we became fans of collisions. Sometimes I wrote well about collisions, which meant I was a writing machine in good repair. Sometimes I wrote badly, which meant I was a writing machine in bad repair. I no more harbored sacredness than did a Pontiac, a mousetrap, or a South Bend Lathe. — Kurt Vonnegut

Science is not a collection of facts. Nor is science something that happens in the laboratory. Science happens in the head. It's a flight of imagination beyond the constraints of ordinary perception. Columbus chapter -The Virgin and the Mousetrap — Chet Raymo

A fine young man and a fine young felly he always was, except that in the old days, before you began coming in here, Mr. Witherwax, he maybe had too much money and spent too much of it on girls. Take them alone, either one; the money without the women, or a good girl without the money that can be a help to a young felly, and he's fixed for life. But put them together; and often as not, the young felly goes on the booze. ("The Better Mousetrap") — Fletcher Pratt

We play into the definitions and stereotypes others impose on us and accept the model-minority myth, thinking it's positive, but it's a trap just like any stereotype. They put a piece of model-minority cheese between the metal jaws of their mousetrap, but we're lactose intolerant anyway! We can't even eat the cheese. — Eddie Huang

One of the simple but genuine pleasures in life is getting up in the morning and hurrying to a mousetrap you set the night before. — Kin Hubbard

Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box. — Anna Quindlen

If you think you have a better mousetrap or car, or shirt, or whatever, you've got to tell people ... — Lee Clow

In baiting a mousetrap with cheese, always leave room for the mouse. — Saki

Let's order too much of something just to see where our limits are. Let's take a chance precisely because it might fail. Let's take the hard way out. Let's go to the moon. Fuck it; let's go to the moon again. Let's quit our jobs. Let's work at being better at what we do by fucking up faster, not less. Let's fuck up really fast. Let's wrestle sharks, fight monsters, and disagree with the board. Let's borrow so much money it becomes someone else's problem. Let's start a 10-hour drive by announcing "I'm not into you anymore." Let's dump everything out of the garage onto the sidewalk and build something really cool in that space. Let's start out to build a better mousetrap, and halfway there let's decide to jump on the mice's team. — Mike Monteiro

Before you build a better mousetrap, it helps to know if there are any mice out there. — Mortimer Zuckerman

No longer does it make sense for an inventor to ask himself, "Can I make a better mousetrap?" because the threat is greater that the government might ban his mousetrap, however safe and efficient it is. — Thomas E. Woods Jr.

Today, if you invent a better mousetrap, the government comes along with a better mouse. — Ronald Reagan

If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The only thing that scares me in the tech area is that it moves so fast that you have to be ready to invest in 20 things. Because if you just invest in one, next week, somebody has a better mousetrap, and you get taken to the cleaners. — Daymond John

Anyone who has invented a better mousetrap, or the contemporary equivalent, can expect to be harassed by strangers demanding that you read their unpublished manuscripts or undergo the humiliation of public speaking, usually on remote Midwestern campuses. — Barbara Ehrenreich

Just when you've squared up to the solemn realisation that life is a bitch, it turns round and does something nice, just to confuse you. - Emily Spitzer, The Better Mousetrap — Tom Holt

At its deepest level, creativity is not about building a better mousetrap. It's about freeing the mouse. — Victor Shamas

You are a mousetrap of a friend, all soft cheese and hard springs — Chris Cleave

You can't write a book and just expect it to sell itself, you know. We're not building that better mousetrap and waiting for the world to beat a path to our dear. You've got to build a market for your book. — Larry Winget

Apathy is a trap. There is no challenge ... so there is no reward. Remember, there is always free cheese in a mousetrap. — Steve Maraboli

Money has no color. If you can build a better mousetrap, it won't matter whether you're black or white. People will buy it. — A.G. Gaston

Make a better mousetrap and the world will know it; it can measure and applaud your skill. Make a better man and the world will say he did it himself. — Denham Sutcliffe

Working-class families in the north of England used to hear the 1611 Bible regularly at church and at home ... for us, the language didn't seem too difficult. I especially liked 'the quick and the dead' - you really get a feel for the difference if you live in a house with mice and a mousetrap. — Jeanette Winterson

A joke is like building a mousetrap from scratch. You have to work pretty hard to make the thing snap when it is supposed to snap. — Kurt Vonnegut

We're simple-minded, the team at Hulu, which is, we think if we can obsess over quality and build a better mousetrap, that good things will happen. Users will adopt the service, advertisers will see great value in it, and that's what we're seeing. — Jason Kilar

could tell that one of the Russian proverbs he loved was on the way. 'The only place with free cheese is a mousetrap — A.D. Miller

I used to love the saying, 'If you build a better mousetrap, the world will beat a path to your door.' It sounds great, right?

The only problem is that, as it turns out, it's not even remotely true.
Worse yet, it encourages people to passively wait for someone else to give them a break. Most people who do that will grow old waiting for someone to come along and recognize their genius. — John Hawkins

There's progress for you. A bigger and better mousetrap every month. Pretty soon, we'll all be able to kill all the mice at the same time. — Paul Auster

Mankind invented the atomic bomb,
but no mouse would ever construct
a mousetrap. — Albert Einstein

This decade is strewn with examples of bright people who thought they built a better mousetrap that could consistently extract abnormal returns from the financial markets. Some succeed for a time. But while there may occasionally be mis-configurations among market prices that allow abnormal returns, they do not persist. — Alan Greenspan