Peter Farb Quotes

I think my imagination dictates the technologies I use. But at the same time, my imagination can be technologic. Sometimes I see a tool and I know immediately how to use it, but most of the time I use the tool for an idea I already have.

It's so awesome to be a part of something that is successful not because there's a famous person in it or because it's a revival of something, but because it's so fresh and original.

You can't invent something you have no epistemological access to. In a way, it's all recombination.

[At DuPont,] I was very fortunate that I worked under men who were very much interested in making discoveries and inventions. They were very much interested in what they were doing, and they left me alone. And I was able to experiment on my own, and I found this very stimulating. It appealed to the creative person in me.

Knowing how to look is a way of inventing.

The essential fault of surrealism is that it invents without discovering. To make a clam play an accordion is to invent not to discover. The observation of the unconscious, so far as it can be observed, should reveal things of which we have previously been unconscious, not the familiar things of which we have been conscious plus imagination.

Humans test their brand new wings and invent new possibilities using new-fangled things not with grim determination, but with play.

An imitation may be quite successful in its own way, but imitation can never be Success. Success is a first-hand creation.

(I) try new things and give myself permission to fail and experiment because only that way can you get really successful.

We realized we don't have an invention, that's why we gave it away.

Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams - day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing - are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it.

Writing, the art of communicating thoughts to the mind through the eye, is the great invention of the world.

The public values the invention more than the inventor does. The inventor knows there is much more and better where this came from.

To start with invention is the mark of the fertile mind ... and leads later to the interpretation of experience; to start with the reproduction of experience is the infallible index of a barren invention.

Invention requires a long-term willingness to be misunderstood.

No man ever made a great discovery without the exercise of the imagination.

It is with epigrams as with other inventions; the best ones annoy us because we didn't think of them ourselves.

Contentment: The smother of invention.

It is commonly believed that innovations create changes - but few ever do. Successful innovations exploit changes that have already happened.

To do something that you feel in your heart that's great, you need to make a lot of mistakes. Anything that's successful is a series of mistakes.

We took nothing from anybody. We gave a great deal to the world. The only thing keeping us alive is our brilliance. The only thing that keeps our brilliance alive is our patents.

When it does not exist, design it.

The words are easy - most of them have already been invented.

For without invention, no one was ever a great man in his own trade.

The greatest thing on earth is a good idea!