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264 Inventor Quotes

Most executives, many scientists, and almost all business school graduates believe that if you analyze data, this will give you new ideas. Unfortunately, this belief is totally wrong. The mind can only see what it is prepared to see.

Executives Scientist Business school Believe
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Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic.

Mistakes Inadequacies Perception Logic
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Opportunity ideas do not lie around waiting to be discovered. Such ideas need to be produced.

Opportunity Lie Ideas Produced
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The purpose of science is not to analyze or describe but to make useful models of the world. A model is useful if it allows us to get use out of it.
Purpose Science Useful World
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Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it.

Argument Reveal Create
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One very important aspect of motivation is the willingness to stop and to look at things that no one else has bothered to look at. This simple process of focusing on things that are normally taken for granted is a powerful source of creativity.

Motivation Willingness Stop
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It has always surprised me how little attention philosophers have paid to humor, since it is a more significant process of mind than reason. Reason can only sort out perceptions, but the humor process is involved in changing them.

Surprised Attention Philosophers Humor
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In the future, instead of striving to be right at a high cost, it will be more appropriate to be flexible and plural at a lower cost. If you cannot accurately predict the future then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.

Future Striving Flexible Plural
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If you wait for opportunities to occur, you will be one of the crowd.
Opportunities Occur Crowd
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Dealing with complexity is an inefficient and unnecessary waste of time, attention and mental energy. There is never any justification for things being complex when they could be simple.

Complexity Inefficient Mental energy
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Humor is by far the most significant activity of the human brain.

Humor Significant Activity Human brain
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The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar to new ideas.

Need Right Biggest Bar
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Unhappiness is best defined as the difference between our talents and our expectations.
Unhappiness Difference Talent Expectations
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To be successful you have to be lucky, or a little mad, or very talented, or find yourself in a rapid growth field.

Successful Mad Talent Rapid growth
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Many highly intelligent people are poor thinkers. Many people of average intelligence are skilled thinkers. The power of a car is separate from the way the car is driven.

Intelligent people Thinker Average Skilled
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Creative thinking - in terms of idea creativity - is not a mystical talent. It is a skill that can be practiced and nurtured.

Creative thinking Mystical Skill
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I think school is a place where thinking should be taught.
School Place Thinking Taught
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Teaching thinking for just five hours to unemployed youngsters increased employment 500 percent.

Teaching Unemployed youngsters
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I do a great deal of work with young children, and if you give a child a problem, he may come up with a highly original solution, because he doesn't have the established route to it.

Great deal Children Problem Original solution
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Humor is probably the most significant characteristics of the human mind. Far more significant than reason. In fact, reason is actually a very cheap commodity.

Humor Characteristic Human mind
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A painter may be looking at the world in a way which is very different from everyone else. If he's a craftsman, he can get other people to see the world through his eyes, and so he enlarges our vision, perception, and there's great value in that.

Painter World Craftsman People
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The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.

Blaze Civilisation Ever Feeble
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The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.

Clearly Deeply Insane Instead
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Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.

After Build Equation Eventually
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By an irony of fate, my first employment was as a draughtsman. I hated drawing; it was for me the very worst of annoyances. Fortunately, it was not long before I secured the position I sought, that of chief electrician to the telephone company.

Before Chief Company Drawing
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Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.

Admired Artists Creations Gives
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In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired. The perfection of this means of reading thought will create a revolution for the better in all our social relations.

Any Better Create Desired
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Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge.

Added Appliances Electrical Instruments
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Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

Added Appliances Electrical Instruments
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Of the various branches of electrical investigation, perhaps the most interesting and immediately the most promising is that dealing with alternating currents.
Branches Currents Dealing Electrical
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As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway.

Branches Currents Ebb Electric
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We wind a simple ring of iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will.

Allow Bring Connections Delight
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Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

Affected Being Distance Engine
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There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

Based Designate Faculty Impression
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It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

Ahead Always Applied Basic
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The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War.

Cabinet Culture Far Holds
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The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

Among Certainly Desirable Difficult
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I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

Been Great Inventions Made
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I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat.

Abstain Also Meat Myself
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I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

Any Convert Crucial Globe
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The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.

The heart Reasons Knows not
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Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction.

Men never Do evil Cheerfully Religious conviction
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I would prefer an intelligent hell to a stupid paradise.

Would prefer Intelligent hell Stupid paradise
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Kind words don't cost much. Yet they accomplish much.

Kinds words Cost much Accomplish
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You always admire what you really don't understand.

Always admire You really Don't understand
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People almost invariably arrive at their beliefs not on the basis of proof but on the basis of what they find attractive.

People Their beliefs The basis Proof
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I lay it down as a fact that if all men knew what others say of them, there would not be four friends in the world.

All men Knew What others Say
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Curiosity is only vanity. We usually only want to know something so that we can talk about it.

Curiosity Vanity Know something Talk
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Truth is so obscure in these times, and falsehood so established, that, unless we love the truth, we cannot know it.

Truth Obscure Falsehood Established
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Few friendships would survive if each one knew what his friend says of him behind his back

Few friends Survive One knew Says
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