For God’s sake, go down to reception and get rid of a lunatic who’s down there. He says he’s got a machine for seeing by wireless! Watch him – he may have a razor on him. (Editor, responding to a visit from John Logie Baird, inventor of a prototype television apparatus, 1925)
Inventions - Inventors Quotes
Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent.
A tool is but an extension of a man’s hand, and a machine is but a complex tool. And he that invents a machine augments the power of a man and the well being of man-kind.
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
I thank the host this evening for his kind remarks but I must insist upon one minor correction. God invented the talking machine. I only invented the first one that can be shut off. (at a dinner, the toastmaster mentioned his many inventions, dwelling at length on the talking machine.)
Inventor, n. A person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers, and springs, and believes it civilization.
There is not the slightest indication that energy will ever be obtainable from the atom.
For every person who thinks up a magnificent breakthrough idea, there are a hundred who are nothing more than mindless and unimportant implementers of the idea. The reason for the imbalance in numbers is that the implementers tend to kill the people with the great ideas in order to cut down on the workload. (“Dilbert”)
There is no adequate defense, except stupidity, against the impact of a new idea.
