#invention

Did you ever think about the creation of the flame-thrower? Someone, somewhere, at some time must have been sitting on his porch, and said, thoughtfully, 'I want to set him on fire.' gesturing to his neighbor. His friend who sat beside him and happened to be handy with tools said, 'I can do that.' Thus, we have a flame thrower. ↗

— John Larson

#humor #inventions #humor

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

#inventors #plagiarism #men

It is naturally given to all men to esteem their own inventions best. ↗

— Thomas More

#invention #mankind #vanity #men

My country has contrived for me the most insignificant office that ever the invention of man contrived or his imagination conceived. ↗

— John Adams

#contrived #country #ever #his #imagination

Literature is my calling To hold up the mirror to my countrymen comes natural to me; and in the open field of invention I am not without hopes of giving them pleasure. ↗

— Thomas Edward Brown

#calling #comes #countrymen #field #giving

The whole action of the laws tended to increase the number of consumers of food and to diminish the number of producers, was due the invention of the Malthusian theory of population. ↗

— Henry Charles Carey

#consumers #diminish #due #food #increase

The real abhorrent consequence of the invention of atomic bombs is the fact that we still have them and they're spreading. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#atomic #atomic bombs #bombs #consequence #fact

Community colleges are one of America's great social inventions a gateway to the future for first time students looking for an affordable college education, and for mid-career students looking to get ahead in the workplace. ↗

— Barbara Mikulski

#ahead #america #college #college education #colleges

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being. ↗

— John Stuart Mill

#any #being #day #human #human being

Invention, strictly speaking, is little more than a new combination of those images which have been previously gathered and deposited in the memory; nothing can come of nothing. ↗

— Joshua Reynolds

#combination #come #deposited #gathered #images