#invention

The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's. ↗

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

#individuality #invention #beauty

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

There is no less invention in aptly applying a thought found in a book, than in being the first author of the thought. ↗

— Pierre Bayle

#aptly #author #being #book #first

I fear this little episode does not speak very favourably for my business capacity in those early days, for I certainly ought to have made much more than I did by this really important invention. ↗

— Henry Bessemer

#capacity #certainly #days #did #does

The rate of human invention is faster, and the rate of cultural loss is slower, in areas occupied by many competing societies with many individuals and in contact with societies elsewhere. ↗

— Jared Diamond

#competing #contact #cultural #elsewhere #faster

As the archeology of our thought easily shows, man is an invention of recent date. And one perhaps nearing its end. ↗

— Michel Foucault

#date #easily #end #invention #man

By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead. ↗

— Damon Knight

#inventions #science-fiction #sounds #vibrations #experience

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