Thanksgiving is America's favourite holiday, and a brilliant piece of personal as well as patriotic calendrical invention.

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.

Technology has always been a catalyst for change, such as the invention of the airplane or the Internet.

Because we imagine, we can have invention and technology. It's actually play, not necessity, that is the mother of invention.

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.

The Internet is the most important single development in the history of human communication since the invention of call waiting.

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

Telephone, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.

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

To avoid becoming chronically unemployed, people need more than platitudes offering sympathy. Career reinvention requires encouragement and guidance.

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

The International Space Station is a phenomenal laboratory, an unparalleled test bed for new invention and discovery. Yet I often thought, while silently gazing out the window at Earth, that the actual legacy of humanity's attempts to step into space will be a better understanding of our current planet and how to take care of it.

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.

In England, an inventor is regarded almost as a crazy man, and in too many instances, invention ends in disappointment and poverty. In America, an inventor is honoured, help is forthcoming, and the exercise of ingenuity, the application of science to the work of man, is there the shortest road to wealth.

I'm proud of my invention, but I'm sad that it is used by terrorists.

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.

Invention is not enough. Tesla invented the electric power we use, but he struggled to get it out to people. You have to combine both things: invention and innovation focus, plus the company that can commercialize things and get them to people.

A little renovation and reinvention is a positive thing.

That is to say, epic poetry has been invented many times and independently; but, as the needs which prompted the invention have been broadly similar, so the invention itself has been.

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.

I've got a new invention. It's a revolving bowl for tired goldfish.

Science is to be much commended for the ingenuity, the patience, and the persistency it displays in the invention of instruments wherewith to ferret out the secrets of nature.