Friday, July 18, 2003

"Everything that can be invented - has already been invented"

AttributedCharles Duell, Commissioner of the United States Patent Office, 1899. Cf.Henry Ellsworth, a patent commissioner in 1843 who said something similar in a report to Congress: "The advancement of the arts, from yearto year, taxes our credulity and seems to presage the arrival of thatperiod when human improvement must end."
"If you are not criticized, you may not be doing much."

Donald Rumsfeld, US Secretary of Defense
Widely quoted, no citation found