A Quote by Philip Levine

I have a sense that many Americans, especially those like me with European or foreign parents, feel they have to invent their families just as they have to invent themselves.

Philip Levine

Quote Topics

European Families Feel Foreign Invent Just Like Like Me Many Me Parents Sense Themselves Those

Quote Author

Philip Levine
American - Poet
January 10, 1928 - February 14, 2015

When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution...Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.

Paul Virilio

You can invent things like automatic popcorn poppers. You can invent things like steam-powered window washers. But you can’t invent more time.

Daniel Handler

This is what amazes me: that people are new every day. That they are never the same. You must always invent them, and they must always invent themselves, too.

Lauren Oliver

Each of us has that right, that possibility, to invent ourselves daily. If a person does not invent herself, she will be invented. So, to be bodacious enough to invent ourselves is wise.

Maya Angelou

Technological change is discontinuous. The monks in their scriptoria did not invent the printing press, horse breeders did not invent the motorcar, and the music industry did not invent the iPod or launch iTunes.

Jason Epstein

I don't think I've invented anything. Henry Ford didn't invent the car, and Steve Jobs didn't invent the cell phone, and he didn't invent the digital revolution, but he could adapt, put things together in creative ways. So I think in what we do there's a lot of "let's try it and sees," whether it's a new color or a new style. But we didn't invent cosmetics or lingerie. How we market them - style, color - those are the things that we do, but it isn't pure creation. It's putting together ideas. I truly believe there's nothing really new in the world.

Les Wexner

People can't, unhappily, invent their mooring posts, their lovers and their friends, anymore than they can invent their parents. Life gives these and also takes them away and the great difficulty is to say Yes to life.

James Baldwin

Children who have been very sadistically abused over the long-term are able to dissociate, some of them are able to dissociate as a way of surviving and inventing someone to whom this doesn't happen. And so therefore, they invent within themselves different personalities who have life histories of their own. Many people invent an opposite gender personality as well.

Gloria Steinem

It's not that I wrote those details, but photos can give you the confidence that you have a real feel for the landscape. Then you can invent with a solid kind of faith, and recreate a feel and flavor of the time, and, one hopes, a tonality, a sense of that time having been lived by those characters.

Chang-Rae Lee

Men do not invent Myths. They only invent fables, and tell lies. True Myths create themselves, and find their expression in the men who serve their purpose.

Denis Johnston

We like to invent new disciplines or look at new problems, and invent bandwagons rather than jump on them.

Pattie Maes

It strikes me that this may be one of the differences between youth and age: when we are young, we invent different futures for ourselves; when we are old, we invent different pasts for others.

Julian Barnes

It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear.

Jeanette Winterson

Certain product categories become less attractive for us because, as they become mature, they become low-cost, and hence, there is less to invent. There is less to invent in a television, whereas in heath technology, there is a lot to invent. So we wanted to put our innovative power to work where it really matters.