Think Like an Artist (2015)
“To invent something, all you need is imagination and a big pile of junk.”
“Necessity is the mother of all invention.”
“Invention is the mother of all necessities.”
1970s, The argument: causality in the electric world (1973)
“And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.”
Coraline (2002)
Context: Coraline shivered. She preferred her other mother to have a location: if she were nowhere, then she could be anywhere. And, after all, it is always easier to be afraid of something you cannot see.
Interview http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/physics/laureates/1986/rohrer-interview.html with Heinrich Rohrer at the Nobel Foundation, Stockholm, 9 April, 2008. The interviewer is Adam Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Nobelprize.org http://nobelprize.org/.
“Experience is something you get… after you need it.”
Source: Simply Irresistible
“Necessity, the mother of invention.”
The Twin Rivals (1702), Act i. Compare: "Necessity is the mother of invention", Wycherly, Love in a Wood (1672), act iii. sc. 3.; "Art imitates Nature, and necessity is the mother of invention", Richard Franck, Northern Memoirs (written in 1658, printed in 1694); "Magister artis ingenique largitor Venter" (translated: "Hunger is the teacher of the arts and the bestower of invention"), Persius, Prolog., line 10.
“Necessity is the mother of invention.”
Commonly misattributed due to Benjamin Jowett's popular idiomatic translation (1871) of Plato's Republic, Book II, 369c as "The true creator is necessity, who is the mother of our invention." Jowett's translation is noted for injecting flowery, if not florid, language familiar to his Victorian era audience. (See "Note on the Translation", by Elizabeth Watson Scharffenberger, ed., in Republic (2005), Spark Educational Publishing, ISBN 1593080972, p. liii http://books.google.com/books?id=9FLdTCiaI_MC&pg=PR53.) Jowett himself, in Plato's Republic: The Greek Text, Vol. III "Notes", 1894, p. 82, gives a literal translation of Plato as "our need will be the real creator," without the proverbial flourish. The Greek text is: ποιήσει δὲ αὐτήν, ὡς ἔοικεν, ἡ ἡμετέρα χρεία. Perseus.tufts.edu http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0167%3Abook%3D2%3Asection%3D369c
Misattributed
“Necessity, the mother of invention.”
Love in a Wood (1671), Act III, scene 3. (This was already a common proverb before Wycherley, cf. Invention, Necessity.)
