Some of the most innocuous inventions have proven earth-shattering, with reverberations felt around the planet. The Internet is the poster child for disruptive technology, but even such inventions as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPod have rocked their respective industries by changing how we entertain ourselves.

Scheduled shipping is one of many inventions that has made New York a global capital of innovation and creativity - from Willis Carrier's invention of air conditioning in Buffalo and George Eastman's breakthrough film technology in Rochester to the rise of hip-hop in the South Bronx and the world's first cell phone call in Midtown Manhattan.

What the country needs are a few labor-making inventions.

It is questionable if all the mechanical inventions yet made have lightened the day's toil of any human being.

Thought is the original source of all wealth, all success, all material gain, all great discoveries and inventions, and of all achievement.

The main ingredient of the first quantum revolution, wave-particle duality, has led to inventions such as the transistor and the laser that are at the root of the information society.

I always knew I wanted to be a technologist, so I went to Duke and got a degree in computer science and electrical engineering. Really, I thought my goal in life was to be an inventor, a problem solver, so I thought I needed a Ph.D. to be good at inventions, but it turns out that you don't.

All national institutions of churches, whether Jewish, Christian or Turkish, appear to me no other than human inventions, set up to terrify and enslave mankind, and monopolize power and profit.

All one's inventions are true, you can be sure of that. Poetry is as exact a science as geometry.

There are conventions for people with serious, boring inventions, but fad inventors need help. You need someone to talk to. You just can't tell your friends you're going to invent a pet rock and mortgage your house to pay for it. It's embarrassing... risky mentally. Your friends think you're crazy.

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.

What is there more unruly than the sea, with its winds, its tornadoes, and its tempests? And yet in what department of her works has Nature been more seconded by the ingenuity of man than in this, by his inventions of sails and of oars?

Even with all our technology and the inventions that make modern life so much easier than it once was, it takes just one big natural disaster to wipe all that away and remind us that, here on Earth, we're still at the mercy of nature.

But if inventions have increased man's power over nature very much, then the real value of money is better measured for some purposes in labour than in commodities.

Patents have a place in medical science - for new inventions that advance the state of knowledge.

The more I draw and write, the more I realise that accidents are a necessary part of any creative act, much more so than logic or wisdom. Sometimes a mistake is the only way of arriving at an original concept, and the history of successful inventions is full of mishaps, serendipity and unintended results.

The bicycle might just be the greatest of all inventions. It empowers the human machine, and with no input beyond perhaps a trendy isotonic health drink in a brightly coloured bottle at an inflated price.

As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.

I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.

We owe to the Middle Ages the two worst inventions of humanity - romantic love and gunpowder.

Aren't we all dreamers? It's only because man dreamt of flying that we are travelling in planes. Behind all inventions, we see the dreams of people.

Nearly all inventions are not recognised for their positive side either when they're made. So, for example, scientists didn't go out to design a CD machine: they designed a laser. But we got all sorts of things from a laser which we never remotely imagined, and we're still finding things for a laser to do.

I have nothing against investment banking, but it's like massaging money rather than creating money. If you're in physics, you create inventions, you create lasers, you create transistors, computers, GPS.

The inventions and the great discoveries have opened up whole continents to reciprocal communication and interchange, provided we are willing.