Barry Humphries Quotes

I use my mind to solve problems and invent things.

I liked to work in a shop down in the basement and invent things and build gadgets.

My training and my inclination is to invent.

For as long as I can remember, I have been fascinated by things large and small. I wanted to know what made my watch tick, my radio play, and my house stand. I wanted to know who invented the bottle cap and who designed the bridge. I guess from early on I wanted to be an engineer.

What the history of aviation has brought in the 20th century should inspire us to be inventors and explorers ourselves in the new century.

We can go into no mechanic shop, into no manufactory of any description, upon no farm or plantation, or travel a mile on our railroads or in our steamboats, without seeing evidence of our originality and witnessing the fruits of our ingenuity and enterprise.

Men actually flew 1000 years ago…. An important thing about Eilmer's and Ibn Firnas's inventions of the glider is that both occurred in intellectual environments that fostered invention. Ibn Firnas lived during the Golden Age of Islamic art and science, and Eilmer belonged to the Benedictine order, which saw God Himself as a master craftsman.

The Book of the science of Mechanics must precede the Book of useful inventions.

Google is arguably one of the greatest inventions. The search engine is one of the greatest inventions in human history.

If I look into my past, I was definitely into inventors. I was into stories of Edison and Tesla and da Vinci and all these guys making stuff in their garage.

Scheduled shipping is one of many inventions that has made New York a global capital of innovation and creativity - from Willis Carrier's invention of air conditioning in Buffalo and George Eastman's breakthrough film technology in Rochester to the rise of hip-hop in the South Bronx and the world's first cell phone call in Midtown Manhattan.

Most inventions are based on some prior history.

I took a great joy with inventing new kinds of mechanisms. I invented new kinds of machines. I've been a student of science fiction for a long, long time, and I'm very well-versed in science fact and science fiction.

Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself. ...Science fiction is central to everything we've ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don't know what they're talking about.

Engineering is the closest thing to magic that exists in the world.

Engineering is a great profession. There is the satisfaction of watching a figment of the imagination emerge through the aid of science to a plan on paper. Then it moves to realization in stone or metal or energy. Then it brings homes to men or women. Then it elevates the standard of living and adds to the comforts of life. This is the engineer's high privilege.

If I were 21 years old, I would go into biotechnology or genetic engineering.

The human body is a magazine of inventions, the patent office, where are the models from which every hint is taken. All the tools and engines on earth are only extensions of its limbs and senses.

To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.

As a boy I had liked both drawing and physics, and I always abhorred the role of being a spectator. In 1908, when I was 15, I designed, built and flew a toy model airplane which won the then-famous James Gordon Bennett Cup. By 16 I had discovered that design could be fun and profitable, and this lesson has never been lost on me.

The available worlds looked pretty grim. They had little to offer him because he had little to offer them. He had been extremely chastened to realize that although he originally came from a world which had cars and computers and ballet and Armagnac, he didn't, by himself, know how any of it worked. He couldn't do it. Left to his own devices he couldn't build a toaster. He could just about make a sandwich and that was it.

I would love to have access to a company like Caterpillar. I would make all their stuff remote controlled and work ten times as fast.

The traditions of Hollywood are grand and great and are going to survive forever, in a way. But they're not going to be the only way for much longer. The technology is such now that you don't have to have millions of dollars to make a movie. You can make one with a computer.

I love working with technology because it allows me to follow my imagination and to invent new things.

Companies want to innovate. Companies that don't innovate wither on the vine. The connection between STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) and the financial stability of a nation is what needs to established.