Everything has been thought of before, but the problem is to think of it again.

An invention or new combination can be successful only if all if the elements necessary for the recombination are present in the culture.

I thought of the nameless inventor of the bathtub. I was somehow sure it was a woman. And was the inventor of the bathtub plug a man?

Laws of nature are human inventions, like ghosts. Laws of logic, or mathematics are also human inventions, like ghosts. The whole blessed thing is a human invention, including the idea that it isn't a human invention.

Name the greatest of all the inventors. Accident.

It must be confessed that the inventors of the mechanical arts have been much more useful to men than the inventors of syllogisms.

If the Nobel Prize was awarded by a woman, it would go to the inventor of the dimmer switch.

I doubt whether all mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Nothing is invented and brought to perfection all at once.

Invention is the mother of necessity.