During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet. (Al Gore)

If you take the road less traveled, just make sure it isn't on the critical path. (Elisabeth Hendrickson)

My experience has been that creating a compelling new technology is so much harder than you think it will be that you're almost dead when you get to the other shore. (Steve Jobs)

The function of genius is not to give new answers, but to pose new questions which time and mediocrity can resolve. (Hugh Trevor-Roper)

Managing is about systems and processes and resources; leading is about achievement and vision. (Peter McDougall)

It must be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to management than the creation of a new system. For the initiator has the enmity of all who would profit by the preservation of the old institution and merely lukewarm defenders in those who gain by the new ones. (Nicolo Machiavelli)

The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards. (Arthur Koestler)

What actually urges [the scientific investigator] on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes. (H L Mencken)

We must beware of needless innovations, especially when guided by logic. (Winston Churchill)

You can be discouraged by failure, or you can learn from it. So go ahead and make mistakes, make all you can. Because, remember that's where you'll find success - on the far side of failure. (Thomas J Watson Sr)

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them. (Galileo Galilei)

You ought to be able to show that you can do it a great deal better than anyone else with the regular tools before you have a license to bring in your own improvements. (Ernest Hemingway)

A game in which you fly around in space and shoot up other space ships? That is the stupidest idea that I have ever heard. (Atari manager)

If you’re doing an experiment, you should report everything that you think might make it invalid — not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results. (Richard Feynman)

When I examine myself and my methods of thought, I come to the conclusion that the gift of fantasy meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge. (Albert Einstein)

For artists diving into a new technology, it is a triple short-cut to mastery: you get a free ride on the novelty of the medium; there are no previous masters to surpass; and after a few weeks, you are the master. Try that with the violin. (Stewart Brand)

Contrasting this modest effort [of Seymour Cray] with 34 people including the janitor with our vast development activities, I fail to understand why we have lost our industry leadership position by letting someone else offer the world's most powerful computer. (Thomas J Watson Jr)

The milk of disruptive innovation doesn't flow from cash-cows. (David Isenberg)

Is it innovation if everyone can see that it is? (Michal Ostrowski)

The concept of disruptive technology goes to the top of my list as the biggest crock of the new millennium. (John Dvorak)

The challenge isn't to keep your eye on big competitors. It's to pay attention to the innovators. (Dave Duffield)

Economists and historians alike realize that there is a deep difference between homo economicus and homo creativus. One makes the most of what nature permits him to have. The other rebels against nature's dictates. Technological creativity, like all creativity, is an act of rebellion. (Joel Mokyr)

Established technology tends to persist in the face of new technology. (Gerritt Blaauw)

What one man can invent, another can discover. ("Sherlock Holmes")

The man who cannot occasionally imagine events and conditions of existence that are contrary to the causal principle as he knows it will never enrich his science by the addition of a new idea. (Max Planck)

A polyp would be a conceptual thinker if a feeling of "Hollo! Thingumbob again!" ever flitted through its mind. (William James)

It is no good to try to stop knowledge from going forward. Ignorance is never better than knowledge. (Enrico Fermi)

When you get a result that you expect, you have another result; but when you get a result that you don't expect, you have a discovery. (Frank Westheimer)

Theory is knowledge that doesn't work. Practice is when everything works and you don't know why. (Hermann Hesse)

The most exciting phrase to hear in science - the one that heralds new discoveries - is not "Eureka!" but "That's funny..." (Isaac Asimov)

Science is organized common sense where many a beautiful theory was killed by an ugly fact. (Thomas H Huxley)

One can show the following: given any rule, however fundamental or necessary for science, there are always circumstances when it is advisable not only to ignore the rule, but to adopt its opposite. (Paul Feyerabend)

There is no method but to be very intelligent. (T S Eliot)

Mathematical education and maturity are more important in managing large software projects than in working on such projects. (Harlan Mills)

He that will not apply new remedies must expect new evils; for time is the greatest innovator. (Francis Bacon)

He who rejects change is the architect of decay. (Harold Wilson)

It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong. (Richard Feynman)

Mankind always sets itself only such problems as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation. (Karl Marx)

There comes a time when one must stop suggesting and evaluating new solutions, and get on with the job of analyzing and finally implementing one pretty good solution. (Robert Machol)

Always remember that someone, somewhere is making a product that will make your product obsolete. (Georges Doriot)

We have to remind ourselves that support of basic research that's curiosity-driven is an extremely good investment in the long run. It consistently pays off in unexpected technologies and discoveries. (David Goodstein)

In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. (Jan van de Snepscheut)

When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it. (A A Milne)

The principal mark of genius is not perfection but originality, the opening of new frontiers. (Arthur Koestler)

If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it. (Albert Einstein)

A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you, not what you choose to pay for it. (John Ruskin)

Successful visionaries start from where they are, what they have, and what their customers have. (Tom Gilb)

If you're not failing every now and again, it's a sign you're not doing anything very innovative. (Woody Allen)

Is it innovation if everyone can see that it is? (Michal Ostrowski)

It is only when a technology ceases to be a source of strategic distinctiveness for individual firms that it begins to deliver its greatest benefits to economies and societies. (Nicholas Carr)

The process of preparing programs for a digital computer is especially attractive, not only because it can be economically and scientifically rewarding, but also because it can be an aesthetic experience much like composing poetry or music. (Don Knuth)

It seems safe to say that significant discovery, really creative thinking, does not occur with regard to problems about which the thinker is lukewarm. (Mary Henle)

Hell, there are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something. (Thomas Edison)

Chaos at least has an open architecture. Chaos has always been the native home of the infinitely possible. (John Perry Barlow)

Innovation is a weed. (Robert Metcalfe)

I had an immense advantage over many others dealing with the problem inasmuch as I had no fixed ideas derived from long-established practice to control and bias my mind, and did not suffer from the general belief that whatever is, is right. (Henry Bessemer)

There is no such thing as rule-governed creativity. (Emperor Leto II)

Today every invention is received with a cry of triumph which soon turns into a cry of fear. (Bertolt Brecht)

The machine threatens all achievement. (Rainer Maria Rilke)

The new species, or posthuman, will likely view the old normal humans as inferior, even savages, and fit for slavery or slaughter. The normals, on the other hand, may see the posthumans as a threat and if they can, may engage in a preemptive strike by killing the posthumans before they themselves are killed or enslaved by them. (George Annas)

The human mind treats a new idea the way the body treats a strange protein: it rejects it. (Peter Medawar)

In Italy for 30 years under the Borgias they had warfare, terror, murder, bloodshed — and produced Michelangelo, da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland they had brotherly love, 500 years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce—the cuckoo clock. ("Harry Lime")

Creative thinking may mean simply the realisation that there is no particular virtue in doing things the way they have always been done. (Rudolph Flesch)

If you happen to be one of the fretful minority who can do creative work, never force an idea; you'll abort it if you do. Be patient and you'll give birth to it when the time is ripe. Learn to wait. (Robert Heinlein)

Everything we do is futile, but we must do it anyway. (Mohandas Gandhi)

There is little that bureaucrats hate more than innovation, especially innovation that produces better results than the old routines. Improvements always make those at the top of the heap look inept. Who enjoys appearing inept? (Frank Herbert)

A committee is a cul-de-sac down which ideas are lured and then quietly strangled. (Sir Barnett Cocks)

The leaders say: "Let's be more innovative." The staff says: "Bravo. When do we start?" The mid-level managers say: "Wait a minute, let's think about that. What about… and …? Have you REALLY thought it through? Does this mean I have to change?" (Claude Legrand)

I don't think monopolies are worth it. Nor do I think they're the best way to proceed with research. So I see a transition going on away from relying on monopolies. In fact, we should have fewer monopolies. They're very hurtful to our economy and to innovation. (Robert Metcalfe)

You never change something by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. (Buckminster Fuller)

In every respect the burden is hard on those who attack an almost universal opinion. They must be very fortunate as well as unusually capable if they obtain a hearing at all. (John Stuart Mill)

If the world should blow itself up, the last audible voice would be that of an expert saying it can't be done. (Peter Ustinov)

---

The system was finished, the tests were concluded,
The users' last changes were even included.
And the users exclaimed, with a snarl and a taunt,
"It's just what we asked for, but not what we want!"