Inventiveness is being able to design new things or think originally

• Inventiveness: Having or showing an ability to think of new ideas and methods: creative or imaginative.  Merriam Webster
• Inventive: Having the ability to create or design new things or to think originally. Oxford Dictionary
• A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That’s how the patent office defines it. That’s an invention. Dean Kamen
• Creativity,  Creative thinking,  Innovation,  Originality,  Technology,  Progress,  Discovery,  Resourcefulness

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Invention is synonymous with discovery

• …to invent is to discover that we know not, and not to recover or resummon that which we already know. Sir Francis Bacon
• There are no new inventions, only new discoveries. Stephen Richards
• Discovery

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… and helps to shape the future

• The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Alan Kay

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All of civilisation is based on invention

• All our civilization is based on invention; before invention, men lived on fruits and nuts and pine cones and slept in caves. Reginald Fessenden

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True inventions are startling and unexpected

• A significant invention must be startling, unexpected. It must come to a world that is not prepared for it. Edwin Herbert Land
• An invention that is quickly accepted will turn out to be a rather trivial alteration of something that has already existed. Edwin Herbert Land
• Invention is by its very nature disruptive. If you want to be understood at all times, then don’t do anything new. Jeff Bezos

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Great inventions are often an aggregation of minor inventions

• Great inventions are never, and great discoveries are seldom, the work of any one mind. Every great invention is really an aggregation of minor inventions, or the final step of a progression. It is not usually a creation, but a growth, as truly so as is the growth of the trees in the forest. Robert H. Thurston

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Invention requires a good imagination

• To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk. Thomas A. Edison
• Imagination is… the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and, therefore, the foundation of all invention and innovation. J.K. Rowling
• No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination. Edward Hopper
• It is only the unimaginative who ever invents. The true artist is known by the use he makes of what he annexes, and he annexes everything. Oscar Wilde
• Imagination

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Invention requires ignoring the rules

• There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about. Helen Frankenthaler

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Invention requires experimentation and play

• Necessity is not the mother of invention. Knowledge and experiment are its parents. Willis R. Whitney
• We are more ready to try the untried when what we do is inconsequential. Hence the fact that many inventions had their birth as toys. Eric Hoffer
• Experimentation,  Play

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Invention requires a beginner’s mind

• Almost always the men who achieve these fundamental inventions of a new paradigm have been either very young or very new to the field whose paradigm they change. Thomas S. Kuh
• Beginner’s mind

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Invention, in many cases, requires a desire to support laziness

• 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
• Idle hands are the mother of invention.
• Laziness is the mother of nine inventions out of ten.  Saunders’s Discovery
• Laziness

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Inventiveness requires an education that encourages creativity

• The principle goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done – men who are creative, inventive and discoverers. Jean Piaget
• An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously. Charles F. Kettering
• The role of the teacher is to create the conditions for invention rather than provide ready-made knowledge. Seymour Papert
• Education

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Nature is the true master of invention

• Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful, more simple or more direct than does nature because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous. Leonardo da Vinci
• Nature

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Final thoughts on invention

• Invention, it must be humbly admitted, does not consist in creating out of void but out of chaos. Mary Shelley
• To understand is to invent. Jean Piaget
• Every year the inventions of science weave more inextricably the web that binds man to man, group to group, nation to nation. Harry Emerson Fosdick
• Chopsticks are one of the reasons the Chinese never invented custard.  Spike Milligan
• Cricket is a game which the British not being a spiritual people had to invent in order to have some concept of eternity.  Lord Mancroft
• Fiction was invented the day Jonah arrived home and told his wife that he was three days late because he had been swallowed by a whale. Gabriel Garcí­a Márquez
• From a commercial point of view, if Christmas did not exist it would be necessary to invent it. Katharine Whitehorn
• Getting caught is the mother of invention.  Robert Byrne
• God invented football so grown men would have something to do between wars.  Dan Jenkins
• Graduation speeches were invented largely in the belief that college students should never be released into the world until they have been properly sedated.  Garry Trudeau
• High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.  Christopher Morley
• I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.  Mark Twain

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On a lighter note

• Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza. Dave Barry
• A great invention for dieters would be a refrigerator which weighs you every time you open the door. E.C. McKenzie
• We owe a lot to Thomas Edison – if it wasn’t for him, we’d be watching television by candlelight. Milton Berle
• Both optimists and pessimists contribute to our society. The optimist invents the airplane and the pessimist the parachute.  Gil Stern
• I believe our Heavenly Father invented man because he was disappointed in the monkey.  Mark Twain
• I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.  George Bernard Shaw
• I invented the cordless extension cord.  Steven Wright
• I think one of the most groundbreaking inventions of all time is the jackhammer.  Demetri Martin
• I’ve got a new invention. It’s a revolving bowl for tired goldfish. Lefty Gomez
• Idle hands are the mother of invention.
• If God did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.  Voltaire
• If they ever invent a vibrator that can open pickle jars we’ve had it.  Jeff Green
• In health news scientists have announced the invention of a women’s condom; it works by fitting snugly over a woman’s wine glass.  Kevin Nealon
• Jazz: Music invented by demons for the torture of imbeciles.  Henry van Dyke
• Laziness is the mother of nine inventions out of ten.  Saunders’s Discovery
• Man invented language to satisfy his deep need to complain.  Jane Wagner
• Marriage is a wonderful invention; then again so is a bicycle repair kit.  Billy Connolly
• My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.  Peter De Vries
• No animal ever invented anything so bad as drunkenness – or so good as drink.  K. Chesterton
• One of the greatest labour-saving inventions of today is tomorrow. Vincent T. Foss
• Science has always been too dignified to invent a good backscratcher.  Don Marquis
• Scrabble was invented by Nazis to piss off kids with dyslexia. Eddie Izzard
• Some sad news from Australia… the inventor of the boomerang grenade died today. Johnny Carson
• Swearing was invented as a compromise between running away and fighting.  Finley Peter Dunne
• Telephone: An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance.  Ambrose Bierce
• Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn’t have in your home. David Frost
• The best way to predict the future is to invent it.  Alan Curtis Kay
• The digital camera is a great invention because it allows us to reminisce – instantly. Demetri Martin
• The guy who invented the first wheel was an idiot; the guy who invented the other three, he was a genius.  Sid Caesar
• The helmet is one of the least effective inventions of mankind. It’s designed to protect a brain that is functioning so poorly as to be unable to prevent itself from being cracked open on its own.  Jerry Seinfeld
• The inventor of soda crackers has a place in hell. Martin H. Fischer
• The musician who invented Swing ought to.  The New York Times
• The wheel was man’s greatest invention, until he got behind it.
• To invent you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.  Thomas Alva Edison
• Today if you invent a better mousetrap the government comes along with a better mouse.  Ronald Reagan
• When the inventor of the drawing board messed things up what did he go back to?  Bob Monkhouse
• Who invented the brush they put next to the toilet? That thing hurts!
• Wickedness is a myth invented by good people to account for the curious attraction of others.  Oscar Wilde
• Without question, the greatest invention in the history of mankind is beer. Oh, I grant you that the wheel was also a fine invention, but the wheel does not go nearly as well with pizza.  Dave Barry
• Y Chromosome: The cause of virility, war, baldness, hockey, sex crimes, clever inventions and a disinclination to ask for directions when lost.

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