Not far from the invention of fire... we must rank the invention of doubt.
--
Collected Essays vol 6, viii; quoted in T. H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist, and Educator (1950) by Cyril Bibby, p. 257.Thomas Henry Huxley
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The greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the invention of the method of invention.
Alfred North Whitehead
Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void, but out of chaos; the materials must, in the first place, be afforded: it can give form to dark, shapeless substances, but cannot bring into being the substance itself. In all matters of discovery and invention, even of those that appertain to the imagination, we are continually reminded of the story of Columbus and his egg. Invention consists in the capacity of seizing on the capabilities of a subject, and in the power of moulding and fashioning ideas suggested to it.
Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.
William Shenstone
The market is not an invention of capitalism. It has existed for centuries. It is an invention of civilization.
Mikhail Gorbachev
I don't think necessity is the mother of invention — invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
Agatha Christie
Huxley, Thomas Henry
Huygens, Christiaan
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