Inventive Quotes

When you ask the wrong question,
you usually get a nonsense answer.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Related topics: Wisdom Cynical Perspective Creativity

Give the right man two fishes and some bread,
and he will feed the world;
give the wrong man two fishes and some bread
and he will invent the fast-food fish sandwich.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

We believe that if men have the talent
to invent new machines that put men out of work,
they have the talent to put those men back to work.
- John F. Kennedy

America did not invent human rights.
In a very real sense, it is the other way around.
Human rights invented America.
- Jimmy Carter

Please sign-up for my Free Daily Inspirational Quotes and Insights Email on the form below.

Thank you for joining me on this journey we call life,
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is unlimited - it expands with the generosity,
compassion, inventiveness, and service that you contribute.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

My world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that I contribute.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

The abundance of life is unlimited -
it expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that you contribute.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Life is unlimited.
Your world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that you contribute.
Money that is spent or given away returns multiplied.
The more love that is given, the more love returns.
The more a helping hand is given, the more hands
are strengthened and empowered to help.
We can help each other to all be winners.
We can all have food, and jobs, and love, and happiness.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

For some of us, the world appears to provide
only a fixed quantity of each resource -
a limited amount of food, of money,
of love, of success, of appreciation.
For others, life is unlimited.
Their world expands with the generosity, compassion,
inventiveness, and service that they contribute.
In this world-view, money that is spent
or given away returns multiplied.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
- Charles H. Duell [attributed]
(Commissioner, US Patent Office, in 1899)

All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy.
What right have we then to depreciate imagination.
- Carl Jung

Necessity is the mother of invention.
- Proverb

The River of Life has no meaning, no good, no bad,
no better, no worse, no love, no hate, no fear, no anger, no joy.
The River of Life has no judgment, no expectation.
The River of Life just IS. There is nothing to do.
There is nothing to say.
There is nothing to think.
There is nothing to feel.
The River just flows. The River is the source of all nourishment -
the source of all obstacles.
The River is the source of all life - the source of all death.
The River is the source of all joy - and the source of all sorrow.
Yet the River has no joy - and the River has no sorrow.
The River is just the River.
One can flow harmoniously with the River -
or one can struggle fearfully against the River -
and the River just flows.
One can accept the River - or one can deny the River -
and the River just flows.
One can worship the River of Life - or one can curse the River of Life -
and the River just flows. There is nothing to do - and the River flows.
There is nothing to say - and the River flows.
There is nothing to think - and the River flows.
There is nothing to feel - and the River flows.
The River flows - and all else is our drama.
The River flows - and all else is our invention.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

There is nothing to do - and the River flows.
There is nothing to say - and the River flows.
There is nothing to think - and the River flows.
There is nothing to feel - and the River flows.
The River flows - and all else is our drama.
The River flows - and all else is our invention.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Human subtlety will never devise an invention
more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature,
because in her inventions nothing is lacking,
and nothing is superfluous.
- Leonardo da Vinci

Majority rule only works if you're also
considering individual rights,
because you can't have five wolves and one sheep
voting on what to have for dinner.
- Larry Flynt

Love is the great miracle cure.
Loving ourselves works miracles in our lives.
- Louise L. Hay

Great works are performed not by strength,
but by perseverance.
- Samuel Johnson

Man becomes great exactly in the degree
in which he works for the welfare of his fellow-men.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Good works are links that form a chain of love.
- Mother Teresa

And on the pedestal these words appear:
`My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings:
'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

This communicating of a man's self to his friend
works two contrary effects;
for it redoubleth joys, and cutteth griefs in half.
- Francis Bacon

"Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
- Percy Bysshe Shelley

Life is pretty simple:
You do some stuff.
Most fails. Some works.
You do more of what works.
- Leonardo da Vinci

My own gratitude list begins with health, family, friends,
and the beauty around me - from the butterflies and rainbows,
to the dolphins, to the birds, to the works produced by the human hand.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie

Optimism is the harmony between man's spirit
and of God pronouncing His works good.
- Helen Keller

I want to share with you the three rules
that I have in order to accept an apprentice.
Rule Number 1: Don't believe me.
I don't want you to believe me
but I want you to listen and make choices - your choices.
If what I say, doesn't work for you, leave it.
But if it works for you and that's what you want, then make it yours.
Rule Number 2: Don't believe yourself.
Why? Because most of your belief system is a lie - it's not true.
And by believing yourself, you create all the limitations
that don't allow you to be what you really are.
Don't believe yourself. Listen to what you say,
listen to what you think, listen to what you believe.
And when you listen, open your ears, open your mind,
open your intelligence and make choices.
Rule 3 is, don't believe anybody else.
Don't believe them at all.
Open your ears and your mind; listen and make choices.
- don Miguel Ruiz

What does it profit, my brethren,
if someone says he has faith but does not have works?
Can faith save him?
- James 2:14

We may not always be aware of it, but we all create
and repeat affirmations constantly.
The problem is, we typically don't pay attention
to exactly what those affirmations are saying.
Often we go through the day giving ourselves
all sorts of contradictory, or even negative messages.
We may project confidence to the world around us,
while our inner dialogue says...
I hope this works.
I am so nervous about this.
I hope I don't blow it.
Affirmations are self fulfilling prophecies.
If we say, This is never going to work
... then chances are excellent it never will.
- John Assaraf

The Artist is he who detects and applies the law
from observation of the works of Genius,
whether of man or Nature.
The Artisan is he who merely applies
the rules which others have detected.
- Henry David Thoreau

Naturally, the common people don't want war ...
but after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy,
and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along,
whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship,
or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship.
Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought
to the bidding of the leaders.
That is easy. All you have to do is tell them
they are being attacked,
and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism
and exposing the country to danger.
It works the same in every country.
- Hermann Goering

The majority of men meet with failure
because of their lack of persistence
in creating new plans to take
the place of those which fail.
- Napoleon Hill

The minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion.
- Soren Kierkegaard

In matters of conscience,
the law of the majority has no place.
- Mohandas (Mahatma) Gandhi

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority,
it is time to pause and reflect.
- Mark Twain

One man with courage makes a majority.
- old saying probably repeated by Andrew Jackson
(falsely attributed to Jefferson)

Truth always rests with the minority,
and the minority is always stronger than the majority,
because the minority is generally formed by those
who really have an opinion,
while the strength of a majority is illusory,
formed by the gangs who have no opinion -
and who, therefore, in the next instant
(when it is evident that the minority is the stronger)
assume its opinion... while truth again reverts to a new minority.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Instead of comparing our lot with that
of those who are more fortunate than we are,
we should compare it with the lot
of the great majority of our fellow men.
It then appears that we are among the privileged.
- Helen Keller

We may consider each generation as a distinct nation,
with a right, by the will of its majority,
to bind themselves, but none to
bind the succeeding generation,
more than the inhabitants of another country.
- Thomas Jefferson

All, too, will bear in mind this sacred principle,
that though the will of the majority is in all cases to prevail,
that will to be rightful must be reasonable;
that the minority possess their equal rights,
which equal law must protect, and to violate would be oppression.
- Thomas Jefferson

Tolerance is the first principle of community;
it is the spirit which conserves
the best that all men think.
- Helen Keller

The only thing necessary for evil to triumph
is for enough good men to do nothing.
- Edmund Burke

When It's Darkest, Men See the Stars.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Nearly all men can stand adversity,
but if you want to test a man's character, give him power.
- Abraham Lincoln

We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men
who walked through the huts comforting others,
giving away their last piece of bread...
They offer sufficient proof that everything
can be taken from a man but one thing:
to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances,
to choose one's own way.
- Viktor E. Frankl

Achievement seems to be connected with action.
Successful men and women keep moving.
They make mistakes, but they don't quit.
- Conrad Hilton

I do not believe in a fate that
falls on men however they act;
but I do believe in a fate
that falls on them unless they act.
- The Buddha

To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men.
- Abraham Lincoln

Men occasionally stumble over the truth,
but most of them pick themselves up
and hurry off as if nothing had happened.
- Winston Churchill

The heresy of one age becomes the orthodoxy of the next.
Mere tolerance has given place to a sentiment of brotherhood
between sincere men of all denominations.
- Helen Keller

Most men pursue pleasure with such breathless haste
that they hurry past it.
- Soren Kierkegaard

Men are disturbed not by things,
but by the view which they take of them.
- Epictetus

In the long run, men hit only what they aim at.
Therefore, they had better aim at something high.
- Henry David Thoreau

Women must try to do things as men have tried.
When they fail their failure must be
but a challenge to others.
- Amelia Earhart

If you would convince a man that he does wrong, do right.
Men will believe what they see.
- Henry David Thoreau

Behind an able man there are always other able men.
- Chinese proverb

More men fail through lack of purpose than lack of talent.
- Billy Sunday

Nothing astonishes men so much as common sense and plain dealing.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

The problems of the world cannot possibly
be solved by skeptics or cynics
whose horizons are limited by the obvious realities.
We need men who can dream of things that never were.
- John F. Kennedy

Men and women are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

How could man rejoice in victory
and delight in the slaughter of men?
- Lao Tzu

There is a good ear, in some men,
that draws supplies to virtue
out of very indifferent nutriment.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

When men are easy in their circumstances,
they are naturally enemies to innovations.
- Joseph Addison

Most men lead lives of quiet desperation
and go to the grave with the song still in them.
- Henry David Thoreau

Shallow men believe in luck.
Strong men believe in cause and effect.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Do not pray for easy lives.
Pray to be stronger men.
- John F. Kennedy

Trust men and they will be true to you;
treat them greatly and they will show themselves great.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men in general judge more from
appearances than from reality. All
men have eyes, but few have
the gift of penetration.
- Niccolo Machiavelli

Many men go fishing all of their lives
without knowing that it is not fish they are after.
- Henry David Thoreau

Great men or men of great gifts
you shall easily find,
but symmetrical men never.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Men are not prisoners of fate,
but only prisoners of their own minds.
- Franklin D. Roosevelt

Please sign up on the form below to receive my Free Daily Inspiration - Daily Quotes email.

May the world be kind to you, and may your own thoughts be gentle upon yourself.
- Jonathan Lockwood Huie