Innovation Quotes

“The tank was originally invented to clear a way for the infantry in the teeth of machine-gun fire. Now it is the infantry who will have to clear a way for the tanks.”

“Progress and growth are impossible if you always do things the way you've always done things.”

“I get lots of ideas when the lights go out at night and it gets very quiet. Sometimes they come when I first lie down to sleep; other times I wake up with an idea racing through my mind. But regardless of when an idea comes, I have made it a habit to get out of bed and write the idea down before it disappears into my dreams. You should do the same.”

“In every company, there is not only the active and passive sex, but, in both men and women, a deeper and more important sex of mind, namely, the inventive or creative class of both men and women, and the uninventive or accepting class.”

“The empires of the future are the empires of the mind.”

“Thought makes everything fit for use.”

“The reverence for the deeds of our ancestors is a treacherous sentiment. Their merit was not to reverence the old, but to honor the present moment; and we falsely make them excuses of the very habit which they hated and defied.”

“Only an inventor knows how to borrow, and every man is or should be an inventor.”

“So all my best is dressing old words new.”

“The treasury of America lies in those ambitions, those energies, that cannot be restricted to a special favored class. It depends upon the inventions of unknown men, upon the originations of unknown men, upon the ambitions of unknown men. Every country is renewed out of the ranks of the unknown, not out of the ranks of those already famous and powerful and in control.”

“We never found a real model (for our vision).”

“In conversation the game is, to say something new with old words. And you shall observe a man of the people picking his way along, step by step, using every time an old boulder, yet never setting his foot on an old place.”

“New information makes new and fresh ideas possible.”

“American invents everything, but the trouble is we get tired of it the minute the new is wore off.”

“There have been three great inventions since the beginning of time: fire, the wheel, and central banking.”

“No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them.”

“The law of flying was not discovered by the contemplation of things staying on the ground.”

“And while you bring all countries with you, you come with a purpose of leaving all other countries behind you - bringing what is best of their spirit, but not looking over your shoulders and seeking to perpetuate what you intended to leave behind in them.”

“If you want to make enemies, try to change something.”

“The Wright brothers didn't contemplate the staying on the ground of things. Alexander Graham Bell didn't contemplate the noncommunication of things. Thomas Edison didn't contemplate the darkness of things. In order to float an idea into your reality, you must be willing to do a somersault into the unconceivable and land on your feet, contemplating what you want instead of what you don't have.”

“A new idea is first condemned as ridiculous and then dismissed as trivial, until finally, it becomes what everybody knows.”

“Without tradition, art is a flock of sheep without a shepherd. Without innovation, it is a corpse.”

“Take Wrigley's Chewing Gum. I don't think the Internet is going to change how people chew gum.”

“I'm always loading my brain with new ways of looking at something.”

“America is a nation that conceives many odd inventions for getting somewhere but it can think of nothing to do once it gets there.”