Innovation Quotes of the Week – May 6, 2012

This week we continue a featured series of some of my favorite innovation-related quotes. Please contribute your favorite innovation quotes in the comments and I’ll feature the best submissions in next week’s Innovation Quotes of the Week!

“If you go into a bar in most places in America and even say the word poetry, you’ll probably get beaten up. But poetry is a really strong, beautiful form to me, and a lot of innovation in language comes from poetry.”

– Jim Jarmusch

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

– Albert Einstein

“Albert Einstein wrote, ‘Everybody is a genius! But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid!’
We are all capable of doing one thing better than any other person alive at this time in history!”

– Matthew Kelly

“Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power to that enables us to empathize with humans whose experiences we have never shared.”

– J.K. Rowling

“We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give.”

– Sir Winston Churchill

“You will find, as you look back on your life, that the moments that stand out are the moments when you have done things for others.”

– Henry Drummond

“Charity and personal force are the only investments worth anything.”

– Walt Whitman

“I am only one; but still I am one. I cannot do everything, but still I can do something; I will not refuse to do the something I can do.”

– Helen Keller

“Make it a rule…never to lie down at night without being able to say, ‘I have made one human being at least a little wiser, a little happier or a little better this day’.”

– Charles Kingsley

“One who fears limits his activities. Failure is the only opportunity to more intelligently begin again.”

– Henry Ford

“If you want to succeed you should strike out on new paths, rather than travel the worn paths of accepted success.”

– John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

“In some cases, inventions prohibit innovation because we’re so caught up in playing with the technology, we forget about the fact that it was supposed to be important.”

– Dean Kamen

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.”

– Albert Einstein

“The world is moved not only by the mighty shoves of the heroes but also by the aggregate of the tiny pushes of each honest worker.”

– Helen Keller

“In this time of budget cuts, we cannot forget that basic science is a building block for scientific innovation and economic growth in the information age.”

– Tim Bishop

“Innovation comes from the producer – not from the customer.”

– W. Edwards Deming

“Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview – nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.”

– Stephen Jay Gould

And here a few of the many thoughts that I added to the conversation during the week on Twitter and elsewhere:

• “One of the ways that you can attract people to your innovation efforts is to leverage the power of passion. Seek to identify what people are passionate about when it comes to your company or your products. Passion can be extremely contagious.”
• “We must maximize our innovation leverage at every level of society. A stable society demands that businesses, governments, and charities work together to create an efficient ecosystem that injects hope into the populace.”
• “Too often we form innovation teams based on who is available instead of focusing on who will make the innovation team successful.”
• “The question is not whether someone is innovative or not, but what innovation roles does each person tend towards. Are all Nine Innovation Roles represented on your teams? Innovation is a team sport, and all nine roles are required for innovation success.”

What are some of your favorite innovation quotes?

Add one or more to the comments, listing the quote and who said it, and I’ll share the best of the submissions as future Innovation Quotes of the Week!

And to all the innovation consultants out there, submit something clever you’ve said and maybe we’ll run it next week.

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Braden Kelley is a popular innovation speaker, embeds innovation across the organization with innovation training, and builds social business strategies that attract and engage customers, partners, and employees. He is the author of Stoking Your Innovation Bonfire from John Wiley & Sons and tweets from @innovate.