Innovation Quotes

“All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better.”

“The Good Spirit never cared for the colleges, and though all men and boys were now drilled in Greek, Latin, and Mathematics, it had quite left these shells high on the beach, and was creating and feeding other matters [science] at other ends of the world.”

“Nature is a rag-merchant, who works up every shred and ort and end into new creations; like a good chemist, whom I found, the other day, in his laboratory, converting his old shirts into pure white sugar.”

“Men over forty are no judges of a book written in a new spirit.”

“Luckily for us, now that steam has narrowed the Atlantic to a strait, the nervous, rocky West is intruding a new and continental element into the national mind, as we shall yet have an American genius.”

“Railroad iron is a magician's rod, in its power to evoke the sleeping energies of land and water.”

“Every man is a new method.”

“We do not yet trust the unknown powers of thought. Whence came all these tools, inventions, book laws, parties, kingdoms? Out of the invisible world, through a few brains. The arts and institutions of men are created out of thought. The powers that make the capitalist are metaphysical, the force of method and force of will makes trade, and builds towns.”

“The two parties which divide the state, the party of Conservation and that of Innovation, are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made.”

“Invention breeds invention.”

“Among the map makers of each generation are the risk takers, those who see the opportunities, seize the moment and expand man's vision of the future”

“One idea lights a thousand candles.”

“Genius appeals to the future.”

“The new statement is always hated by the old, and, to those dwelling in the old, comes like an abyss of skepticism.”

“Man moves in all modes, by legs of horses, by wings of winds, by steam, by gas of balloon, by electricity, and stands on tiptoe threatening to hunt the eagle in his own element.”

“Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door.”

“One single idea may have greater weight than all the men, animals, and machines for a century.”

“Research is not seeing what others do not see, it is seeing the same thing as other people and thinking what they do not.”

“Although personally I am quite content with existing explosives, I feel we must not stand in the path of improvement.”

“The two parties which divide the State, the party of Conservatism and that of Innovation are very old, and have disputed the possession of the world ever since it was made ... Now one, now the other gets the day, and still the fight renews itself as if for the first time, under new names and hot personalities ... Innovation is the salient energy; Conservatism the pause on the last movement.”

“Personal initiative, competitive selection, the profit motive, corrected by failure and the infinite process of good housekeeping and the personal ingenuity-here constitute the life of a free society.”

“Sir, we must beware of needless innovation, especially when guided by logic.”

“If a man can write a better book, preach a better sermon, or make a better mousetrap than his neighbor, though he build his house in the woods, the world will make a beaten path to his door.”

“Genius is a potential that lives within you and every other human being. You have many moments of genius in your lifetime. These are the times when you have a uniquely brilliant idea and implement it even if only you are aware of how fantastic it is.”

“The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man's culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.”