James Watt Quotes

James Watt was equally distinguished as a natural philosopher and chemist; his inventions demonstrate his profound knowledge of those sciences, and that peculiar characteristic of genius - the union of them for practical application. ~ Humphry Davy

I have been branded with folly and madness for attempting what the world calls impossibilities, and even from the great engineer, the late James Watt, who said ... that I deserved hanging for bringing into use the high-pressure engine. This has so far been my reward from the public; but should this be all, I shall be satisfied by the great secret pleasure and laudable pride that I feel in my own breast from having been the instrument of bringing forward new principles and new arrangements of boundless value to my country, and however much I may be straitened in pecuniary circumstances, the great honour of being a useful subject can never be taken from me, which far exceeds riches. ~ Richard Trevithick

Today, nothing is unusual about a scientific discovery's being followed soon after by a technical application: The discovery of electrons led to electronics; fission led to nuclear energy. But before the 1880's, science played almost no role in the advances of technology. For example, James Watt developed the first efficient steam engine long before science established the equivalence between mechanical heat and energy. ~ Edward Teller

The best ideas aren't hidden in shadowy recesses. They're right in front of us, hidden in plain sight. Innovation seldom depends on discovering obscure or subtle elements but in seeing the obvious with fresh eyes. This is easier said than done because nothing is as hard to see as what's right before our eyes. We overlook what we take for granted. Billions of tea drinkers observed the force of steam escaping from water boiling in a kettle before James Watt realized that this vapor could be converted into energy. ~ Richard Farson

I had entered the Green [of Glasgow] by the gate at the foot of Charlotte Street - had passed the old washing-house. I was thinking upon the engine at the time, and had gone as far as the herd's house, when the idea came into my mind that as steam was an elastic body it would rush into a vacuum, and if a communication were made between the cylinder and an exhausted vessel it would rush into it, and might be there condensed without cooling the cylinder. I then saw that I must get rid of the condensed steam and injection water if I used a jet, as in Newcomen's engine. Two ways of doing this occurred to me. First, the water might be run off by a descending pipe, if an outlet could be got at the depth of 35 or 36 feet, and any air might be extracted by a small pump. The second was to make the pump large enough to extract both water and air. ... I had not walked further than the Golf-house when the whole thing was arranged in my mind.

{In Robert Hart's words, a recollection of the description of Watt's moment of inspiration, in May 1765, for improving Thomas Newcomen's steam engine.} ~ James Watt

For the birth of something new, there has to be a happening. Newton saw an apple fall; James Watt watched a kettle boil; Rontgen fogged some photographic plates. And these people knew enough to translate ordinary happenings into something new ... ~ Alexander Fleming

I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton. ~ David Antin

When 'consciousness' is unawares transferred from great things to small' - which Spencer regarded as the prime cause of laughter-the result will be either a comic or an aesthetic experience, depending on whether the person's emotions are of the type capable of participating in the transfer or not. The artist, reversing the parodist's technique, walks on a tightrope, as it were, along the line where the exalted and the trivial planes meet; he 'sees with equal eye, as God of all, / A hero perish or a sparrow fall'. The scientist's attitude is basically similar in situations where he suddenly discovers the connection between a banal event and a general law of nature - Newton's apple or the boiling kettle of James Watt. ~ Arthur Koestler

The version of technology we live with most closely resembles the one that Scots such as James Watt organized and perfected. It rests on certain basic principles that the Scottish Enlightenment enshrined: common sense, experience as our best source of knowledge, and arriving at scientific laws by testing general hypotheses through individual experiment and trial and error. ~ Arthur Herman

True greatness is when your name is like ampere, watt, and fourier - when it's spelled with a lower case letter. ~ Richard Hamming

I would rather believe something and suffer for it, than to slide along into success without opinions. ~ James A. Garfield

I will lay my world at your feet, Anastasia. I want you, body and soul, forever. ~ E.L. James

War never ends: It sends shock waves down through the generations that follow. #MemorialDay
- ~ James Aura

Her tears and my soul, they live parallel lives. Run, ache, burn. Repeat. Her tears and my soul, they live parallel lives. - BENTON JAMES KESSLER ~ Colleen Hoover

Only the Irish working class remains as the incorruptible inheritors of the fight for freedom in Ireland. ~ James Connolly

Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems. In ~ James C. Collins

And they didn't have to get into a lot of legal speak or talk ER terms, they were real people. I think that's why so many actresses were attracted to it. And it was just about problems that you could identify with so much, right off the bat. ~ James Denton

What is even more striking than the negational character of this political culture is the absence of robust and constructive affirmations. Vibrant cultures make space for leisure, philosophical reflection, scientific and intellectual mastery, and artistic and literary expression, among other things. Within the larger Christian community in America, one can find such vitality in pockets here and there. Yet where they do exist, they are eclipsed by the greater prominence and vast resources of the political activists and their organizations. What is more, there are few if any places in the pronouncements and actions of the Christian Right or the Christian Left (none that I could find) where these gifts are acknowledged, affirmed, or celebrated. What this means is that rather than being defined by its cultural achievements, its intellectual and artistic vitality, its service to the needs of others, Christianity is defined to the outside world by its rhetoric of resentment and the ambitions of a will in opposition to others. ~ James Davison Hunter

Don't live a life you don't want to talk about. ~ James Patterson

I don't think you can define how you acquire your imagination any more than you can define why one person has a sense of humor and another doesn't. But I certainly would lean to the side that says all those solitary hours of daydreaming were a kind of training for poetry. ~ James Tate

To avoid entangling alliances has been a maxim of our policy ever since the days of Washington, and its wisdom no one will attempt to dispute. ~ James Buchanan

Our attitude has always been that if you hire good people and provide good wages and good jobs and more than that - if you provide careers - that good things will happen to your company. I think we can say that that has been proved by the quality of people that we have and how they have built our organization. ~ James Sinegal

Life is really about a spiritual unfolding that is personal and enchanting - an unfolding that no science or philosophy or religion has yet fully clarified. ~ James Redfield

But then I lock back in and I start thinking about how fun it is to compete during the playoffs and the first round, the second round, and Eastern Conference Finals. If I'm lucky enough to get here again, it will be fun to do it. ~ LeBron James

We are human less by virtue of our ideal goals than by the vice of our inferiority. ~ James Hillman

The girl reached her hand into the pit, unafraid. She knew the dark should fear her. ~ Carol James Marshall

We use intuition as a way to connect with our Divine Self. ~ James Van Praagh

When you can, always advise people to do what you see they really want to do. Doing what they want to do, they may succeed; doing what they don't want to do, they won't ~ James Gould Cozzens

I had a national and international reputation. I had written the history and articles. So I brought to the Trotskyist movement some international reputation. ~ C.L.R. James

I'm looking forward to being able to retire from being a public figure and being able to afford to be myself! ~ James Taylor

Generosity is a virtue for individuals, not governments. When governments are generous it is with other people's money, other people's safety, other people's future. ~ P.D. James

Believe me, folks, we do not know it all, and no one should be surprised at that revelation. ~ James Bunnell

Find the enemy that wants to end this experiment (in American democracy) and kill every one of them until they're so sick of the killing that they leave us and our freedoms intact. ~ James Mattis

Yet one must also recognize that morality is based on ideas and that all ideas are dangerous - dangerous because ideas can only lead to action and where the action leads no man can say. ~ James Baldwin

I am a man more sinned against than sinning" (Lear, 9.60). ~ James Shapiro

Much of the vitality in a friendship lies in the honoring of differences, not simply in the enjoyment of similarities. ~ James Fredericks

If nature had produced spontaneously all the objects which we desire, and in sufficient abundance for the desires of all, there would have been no source of dispute or of injury among men; nor would any man have possessed the means of ever acquiring authority over another. ~ James Mill

Bulls don't read. Bears read financial history. As markets fall to bits, the bears dust off the Dutch tulip mania of 1637, the Banque Royale of 1719-20, the railway speculation of the 1840s, the great crash of 1929. ~ James Buchan

Humans will market anything to make a fucking profit. Religion, war, love, hate, sex, violence, pain, humor, emotion... all for fucking paper. We are pathetic beings. ~ James Wheeler

I've given up the looking glass; quicksilver has no sense of tact. ~ James Goldman