Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out daily in high schools. (Regarding Robert Goddard’s revolutionary work, 1921)
Inventions - Inventors Quotes
Young people tend to look down on my generation. They say that we didn’t have satellite TV, we didn’t have personal computers, we didn’t have the internet. They’re right. We “invented” them.
To select well among old things is almost equal to inventing new ones.
One thing the inventors can’t seem to get the bugs out of is fresh paint.
Edison did not invent the first talking machine – he invented the first one that could be turned off.
Who, when he saw the first sand or ashes by a casual intensiveness of heat melted into metalline form, rugged with excrescences and clouded with impurities, would have imagined that in this formless lump lay concealed so many conveniences of life as would in time constitute a great part of the happiness of the world? […]
What, sir, you would make a ship sail against the wind and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I pray you excuse me. I have no time to listen to such nonsense. (to Robert Fulton)
Invention is the talent of youth, as judgment is of age.
Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attractiveness of others.
The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with the objects it loves.
