Ian Anderson Quotes

the inventor of the plow did more good than the maker of the first rosary - because, say what you will, plowing is better than praying.

The history of American agriculture suggests that you can have transformation without a master plan, without knowing all the answers up front.

Our thanks, and something more substantial than thanks, are due to the man engaged in the effort to produce a successful steam plow.

… whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.

I would prefer to have invented a machine that people could use and that would help farmers with their work - for example a lawnmower.

Women's worst invention was the plow. With the beginning of plow agriculture, men's roles became extremely powerful. Women lost their ancient jobs as collectors.

His mother called such people ignorant and superstitious, but his father only shook his head slowly and puffed his pipe and said that sometimes old stories had a grain or two of truth in them and it was best not to take chances. It was why, he said, he crossed himself whenever a black cat crossed his path.

Invention is the mother of necessities.

The third lesson and tip actually comes from two of my favorite political philosophers: Mao Zedong and Mother Teresa — not often coupled with each other, but the two people I turn to most to basically deliver a simple point, which is, you're going to make choices; you're going to challenge; you're going to say, 'Why not?'; you're going to figure out how to do things that have never been done before.

Every Thursday or something, my mother would shoot it at NBC Studios at Rockefeller Center. And sometimes she would have me there when Morris The Cat was on, and Lassie was on.

The current food crisis is an opportunity for companies to engage in agriculture or biotechnology.

Genius is the father of a heavenly line, but the mortal mother, that is industry.

Lab to land - how to get what is done in the lab to the land, to the farmer.

Necessity, mother of invention.

That's the great secret of creativity. You treat ideas like cats: you make them follow you.

All cat stories start with this statement: "My mother, who was the first cat, told me this...

It is, I admit, mere imagination; but how often is imagination the mother of truth?

I guess they say, "Necessity is the mother of invention" because you have two stark choices when you find yourself in a really desperate situation. You can either fold and cave-in to it or you can become really passionate about getting out of it.

Man's genius has with God's help produced marvelous technical inventions from creation, especially in our times. The Church, our mother, is particularly interested in those which directly touch man's spirit and which have opened up new avenues of easy communication of all kinds of news, of ideas and orientations.

David's mother would often tell him stories were alive. They weren't alive in the way people were alive,or even dogs or cats. People were alive whether you chose to notice them or not, while dogs tended to make you notice them if they decided that you weren't paying enough attention. Cats, meanwhile, were very good at pretending people didn't exist at all when it suited them.

The Unexpected stalks a farm in big boots like a vagrant bent on havoc. Not every farmer is an inventor, but the good ones have the seeds of invention within them. Economy and efficiency move their relentless tinkering and yet the real motive often seems to be aesthetic. The mind that first designed a cutter bar is not far different from a mind that can take the intractable steel of an outsized sickle blade and make it hum in the end. The question is how to reduce the simplicity that constitutes a problem ("It's simple; it's broke.") to the greater simplicity that constitutes a solution.

My father worked for the same firm for 12 years. They fired him and replaced him with a tiny gadget that does everything my father does, only much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one

Here is an educational bombshell: Take from all of today's industrial nations all their industrial machinery and all their energy-distributing networks, and leave them all their ideologies, all their political leaders, and all their political organizations, and I can tell you that within six months, two billion people will die of starvation, having gone through great pain and deprivation along the way.

Progress? It ought to be stopped, that's what I say. If the Lord meant chickens to come out of incubators he'd never have made hens, it stands to reason.

As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.