No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris. -- Orville Wright.

No flying machine will ever fly from New York to Paris. -- Orville Wright.

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy. -- Drillers whom Edwin read more

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy. -- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist in his project to drill for oil in 1859.

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of read more

This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us. -- Western Union internal memo, 1876.

A little while and I will be gone from among you, when I cannot
tell. From no where we came, read more

A little while and I will be gone from among you, when I cannot
tell. From no where we came, into nowhere we go. What is life? Itis a flash of a firefly in the night. It is a breath of a buffalo inthe winter time. It is the little shadow that runs across the grass and loses itself in the sunset.

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round read more

I do not want a plain box, I want a sarcophagus
With tigery stripes, and a face on it
Round as the moon, to stare up.
I want to be looking at them when they come
Picking among the dumb minerals, the roots.
I see them already-the pale, star-distance faces.
Now they are nothing, they are not even babies.
I imagine them without fathers or mothers, like the first gods.
They will wonder if I was important.

I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people, the good working people. I am not read more

I killed the President because he was the enemy of the good people, the good working people. I am not sorry for my crime.

To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our read more

To Harald, may God forgive you and forgive me too but I prefer to take my life away and our baby's before I bring him with shame or killing him, Lupe.

I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a read more

I do not know what I seem to the world, but to myself I appear to have been like a boy playing upon the seashore and diverting myself and then finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay before me all undiscovered.

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said read more

If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this. -- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M Post-It Notepads.