A Quote by Booth Tarkington

One of the hardest conditions of boyhood is the almost continuous strain put upon the powers of invention by the constant and harassing necessity for explanations for every natural act.

Booth Tarkington

Quote Topics

Act Almost Boyhood Conditions Constant Continuous Every Explanations Hardest Invention Natural Necessity Powers Put Strain

Quote Author

Booth Tarkington
American - Novelist
July 29, 1869 - May 19, 1946

Inventive genius requires pleasurable mental activity as a condition for its vigorous exercise. "Necessity is the mother of invention" is a silly proverb. "Necessity is the mother of futile dodges" is much closer to the truth. The basis of growth of modern invention is science, and science is almost wholly the outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity.

Alfred North Whitehead

We have a duty towards music; namely to invent it. ...Invention presupposes imagination but should not be confused with it. For the act of invention implies the necessity of a lucky find and of achieving realization of this find. What we imagine does not necessarily take on concrete form and may remain in a state of virtuality; whereas invention is not conceivable apart from its actually being worked out.

Igor Stravinsky

It's true that necessity is the mother of invention. But for those of us without fathers, there is a deeper truth - necessity is the mother of self-invention.

Michael Hainey

We strain hardest for things which are almost but not quite within our reach.

Frederick William Faber

As long as man labors for a physical existence, though an act of necessity almost, he is yet natural; it is life, though that of this world, for which he instinctively works.

Jones Very

Every time I put on high heels, I think: 'Well, I'll fall over today.' Almost always, I don't. Almost. But all high-heel-wearing women live in constant peril.

Kate Reardon

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

Alison Gopnik

Necessity may be the mother of lucrative invention, but it is the death of poetical invention.

William Shenstone

Necessity first mothered invention. Now invention has little ones of her own, and they look just like grandma.

E. B. White

It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.

Thomas Huxley

I don't think necessity is the mother of invention. Invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness - to save oneself trouble.

Agatha Christie

We say that necessity is the mother of invention, and no country has more of a necessity to develop clean power than China.

Thomas Friedman

Natural Magick therefore is that, which considering well the strength and force of Natural and Celestial beings, and with great curiosity labouring to discover their affections, produces into open Act the hidden and concealed powers of Nature.

Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa

You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.