Building on Ideas Quotes

A lot of great inventions are just little improvements on past ideas.

All ideas grow out of other ideas.

And in Improvisation there is one hard and fast rule, and that rule is known as "Yes And." The term YES AND: to say yes, and not just yes, but to add information. In the adding of information you don't negate the other persons idea - but you build on it.

It is obvious that anything a scientist discovers or invents is based on previous discoveries and inventions. The same applies to the arts.

Scientists are really very conscious of the fact that they stand on the shoulders of an enormous tree of preceding workers and that their own contribution is not so enormous.

If I have seen farther than other men, it is because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

Begin with another's to end with your own.

Anyone who writes anything on any subject is standing on the shoulders of 900 people who've come before you.

Mathematicians stand on each other's shoulders.

Inventions are rarely just a sudden bright idea. Even if they are, they usually have antecedents in the form of pieces of the idea... Piecing these things together gives one a sense of where inventions come from, and that's interesting.

Work grows out of other work, and there are very few eureka moments.