If necessity is the mother of invention, urgency is the uncle of change. Without it, progress slows and then stops and then reverses.
When we developed written language, we significantly increased our functional memory and our ability to share insights and knowledge across time and space. The same thing happened with the invention of the printing press, the telegraph, and the radio.
Invention requires two things: One, the ability to try a lot of experiments, and two, not having to live with the collateral damage of failed experiments.
The imperial vastness of late Roman architecture was made possible by the invention of concrete.
I’m a huge fan of online communities. I think that asynchronous internet-based communication forums such as Reddit and other discussion forums are one of the best things that could possibly have happened to collaborative invention. The Rift certainly would not exist without forums.
I think that short films often contain an originality, a creative freedom, an energy and an invention that is inspiring and entertaining. I think they are, as Shakespeare put it, a good deed in a naughty world.
What interests me is starting businesses on our own, finding ideas that we can support, and simply investing in invention.
To appropriate an invention, be it artistic or technical, you have to have at least a part of your spirit embracing it so radically that you somehow change.
Our most valuable resources – creativity, communication, invention, and reinvention – are, in fact, unlimited.
If Christianity is a mere invention of man, and the Bible is of no more authority than any other uninspired volume, how is it that the book is what it is?
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
The classy gangster is a Hollywood invention.
Architecture is invention.
My bookshelves chiefly function as a snapshot of what I was reading prior to the invention of the Kindle.
When we work with history, to a very great degree we are all guessing. But by using motifs of time and history in a fantasy setting, we are acknowledging that this educated guesswork, invention, fantasy underlie our treatment of the past and its peoples – and we are not claiming a right to do with them as we will.
The concept of war crimes is an American invention.
Not since Ancient Greece have cities been thought of as the ideal living environment for humans. And that was so long ago it predates the invention of trousers.
It’s a non-stop invention, this game of life, and as soon as you think you’ve got it, you lose it.
With the advent of computing, human invention crossed a threshold into a world different from everything that came before. The computer is the universal machine almost by definition, machine-of-all-trades, capable of accomplishing or simulating just about any task that can be logically defined.
I like to capture the spirit of what the writers intended but find my own nuances. That comes from jazz – the invention and freeness within a structure.
Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It’s actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.
Tackling climate change is not a luxury for the good times: for good and bad times it has become a necessity – but necessity is the mother of invention.
I think that various styles and methods and approaches are an invention of people who don’t understand the process of acting and who try very hard to label things.
Due to the sweeping time frame and the voices moving back and forth, the outline for ‘The Invention of Wings’ was the strangest one I’ve ever done. I created six large, separate outlines, one for each part of the book, and hung them around my study.
No Latina woman would be called ‘Ms.’ – that’s an invention of middle-class Anglo women. Latina women are proud to be called ‘Mrs.’ That simply means that we have a family.
Internally, we’re focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that’s out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we’ve written and all the invention we’ve created has been focused on our own tech and our own products.
The invention of money opened a new field to human avarice by giving rise to usury and the practice of lending money at interest while the owner passes a life of idleness.
People often ask me how I feel about my invention being used to kill people every day and the AK being a common weapon of ethnic conflicts. I want to make it clear that I created my assault rifle to protect my country. You can blame politicians for its spreading out of control on a global scale.
As far as I’m concerned, the essentials of jazz are: melodic improvisation, melodic invention, swing, and instrumental personality.
The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.
There’s a whole generation of young people who are faced with the so-called ‘jobless recovery.’ Necessity is the mother of invention. They are out there, all around the world, creating new companies.
There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.
Internally, we’re focused on building our own technology, leveraging all the momentum that’s out there around wearable computing and mobile computing and PC computing. But at the end of the day, all the code we’ve written and all the invention we’ve created has been focused on our own tech and our own products.
In an approximate way, the logic of commons has been understood for a long time, perhaps since the discovery of agriculture or the invention of private property in real estate.
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.
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos.
Never keep a line of retreat: it is a wretched invention.
Ever since the arrival of printing – thought to be the invention of the devil because it would put false opinions into people’s minds – people have been arguing that new technology would have disastrous consequences for language.
Pirates did not store all their treasures in treasure chests, then bury them and draw maps to them. That’s a movie invention. In reality, pirates spent their money as fast as they could steal it because they knew they were living on borrowed time. They didn’t want to wait around to enjoy the money.
The ‘fiscal cliff’ is a ruse, an invention by the right and the rich, to try and keep their huge tax breaks.
Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.
Scientific knowledge is, by its nature, provisional. This is due to the fact that as time goes on, with the invention of better instruments, more data and better data hone our understanding further. Social, cultural, economic, and political context are relevant to our understanding of how science works.
A sudden silence in the middle of a conversation suddenly brings us back to essentials: it reveals how dearly we must pay for the invention of speech.
The thriller is not a recent invention. It probably goes back to the dawn of storytelling.
The Internet has destroyed irony in the world, or at least wounded it considerably. What are we to do about an invention whose end result is that starving people in China are looking up things on marthastewart.com?
I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness – to save oneself trouble.
For my grandmother’s generation, the big invention was cake mix; for our moms, it was the microwave, and for me, it’s the iPhone. And that’s enabled us to do so many different things more efficiently at home.
Time has always been used against us on a certain level. The invention of the clock made us accountable to the employer, gave us a standard measure and stopwatch management, and it also led to the requirement of interest-bearing currency to grow over time, the requirement of the expansion of our economy.
Reading or written language is a cultural invention that necessitated totally new connections among structures in the human brain underlying language, perception, cognition, and, over time, our emotions.
Everything we do is designed, whether we’re producing a magazine, a website, or a bridge. Design is really the creative invention that designs everything.
I suppose it’s fair to say that I am interested in the invention of self or selves. We’re all born into certain circumstances with particular physical traits, unique developmental experiences, geographical and historical contexts.
Correspondences are like small clothes before the invention of suspenders; it is impossible to keep them up.
