The Quotes canon
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Every quote has been curated by hand and carefully authenticated.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Browse all 10,075 quotes or apply filters in different categories to narrow your search.
Agatha Christie1 quote
Invention... Arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble. — Agatha Christie · 1976Alan Kay1 quote
The best way to predict the future is to invent it. — Alan Kay · 1971Albert Einstein1 quote
A new idea comes suddenly and in a rather intuitive way. But intuition is nothing but the outcome of earlier intellectual experience. — Albert Einstein · 1949Alfred Whitney Griswold1 quote
Creative ideas do not spring from groups. They spring from individuals. — Alfred Whitney Griswold · 1957Guillaume Apollinaire1 quote
When a man wanted to make a machine that would walk, he created the wheel, which does not resemble a leg. — Guillaume Apollinaire · 1917Henry Ford1 quote
Wise people... Are so wise and practical that they always know to a dot just why something cannot be done; they always know the limitations. — Henry Ford · 1922Heywood Broun1 quote
Just as every conviction begins as a whim so does every emancipator serve his apprenticeship as a crank. A fanatic is a great leader who is just entering the room. — Heywood Broun · 1928Ira Gershwin1 quote
They all laughed at Christopher Columbus
When he said the world was round
They all laughed when Edison recorded sound
They all laughed at Wilbur and his brother
When they said that man could fly;
They told Marconi
Wireless was a phony-
It's the same old cry! — Ira Gershwin · 1937John Henry1 quote
I know you're taking it in the teeth out there, but the first guy through the wall, he always gets bloody. Always. This is threatening not just a way of doing business, but in their minds, it's threatening the game. Really what it's threatening is their livelihoods, it's threatening their jobs. It's threatening the way that they do things. And every time that happens, whether it's the government, or a way of doing business, or whatever it is, the people who are holding the reins—they have their hands on the switch—they go batshit crazy. — John Henry · 2011John Locke1 quote
New opinions are always suspected, and usually opposed, without any other reason but because they are not already common. — John Locke · 1690Lawrence Durrell1 quote
Our inventions mirror our secret wishes. — Lawrence Durrell · 1958Mark Twain1 quote
The man with a new idea is a Crank until the idea succeeds. — Mark Twain · 1897Mark Zuckerberg1 quote
If you guys were the inventors of Facebook, you'd have invented Facebook. — Mark Zuckerberg · 2010Mary Shelley1 quote
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos. — Mary Shelley · 1831Niccolo Machiavelli1 quote
There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. Because the innovator has for enemies all those who have done well under the old conditions, and lukewarm defenders in those who may do well under the new. — Niccolo Machiavelli · 1513R.D. Laing1 quote
Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be break-through. — R.D. Laing · 1967Socrates1 quote
The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention. — Socrates · 375 BCThomas Edison1 quote
For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use. — Thomas Edison · 1917Yevgeny Zamyatin1 quote
Heretics are the only bitter remedy against the entropy of human thought. — Yevgeny Zamyatin · 1923