Watt Quotes
It was the White Race who produced men like Columbus who crossed the unknown Atlantic; men like Magellan who first circumnavigated the globe; men like Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Velazquez, Bernini, Rubens, Raphael and thousands of other geniuses who created beautiful and exquisite productions in the fields of sculpture and painting; geniuses like Beethoven, Bach, Wagner and Verdi who created beautiful music; men like James Watt who invented the steam engine; men like Daimler who invented and built the reciprocating internal combustion engine; production geniuses like Henry Ford, inventors like Thomas Edison; such a prodigal genius as Nikola Tesla in the field of physics and electricity; literary geniuses like Shakespeare, Goethe and thousands of others, untold geniuses in the fields of mathematics, in the fields of chemistry and physics.
Ben Klassen
It is remarkable how much of the utilised information men possess has been derived from the observations of astronomers. The mechanism of the universe was known before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, or Watt constructed a steam engine. The astronomers seem to have been the pioneers of every branch of human knowledge. The Old and the New Testament open astronomically: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen., i., I). "The wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is He that is born King of Jews? for we have seen His star in the east" (Matt., ii., 2). It must be remembered that the science of astronomy in one important respect differs from all other sciences. Astronomers are observers only - they ascertain causes by watching effects. They cannot interfere with or alter the causes in operation.
William Crookes
Technological advances seem to come disproportionately from a few very rare geniuses, such as Johannes Gutenberg, James Watt, Thomas Edison, and the Wright brothers. They were Europeans, or descendants of European emigrants to America. So were Archimedes and other rare geniuses of ancient times. Could such geniuses have equally well been born in Tasmania or Namibia? Does the history of technology depend on nothing more than accidents of the birthplaces of a few inventors?
Jared Diamond
Hutton became very critical of a system where appointments depended not on merit but on the support of those in power. Of one possible opening for Watt he wrote, ‘I think it only needs to have a man properly bestir himself but that is what few political people do unless to serve themselves.
Stephen Baxter
Blake and Coleridge and Wilberforce were... contemporaries of Arkwright and James Watt. Against this, those who hold the illusion that pre-industrial England was more sensitive and cultured, point to the misery of the manufacturing age. ...[T]errible evils ...are ...far older than 1800 and the machines. But in the factory these evils became naked and public; and the driving force for reform came from the men of the mill, from Robert Owen and the elder Peel.
Jacob Bronowski
My mother had rubbings from the temple at Angkor Watt on the walls-that was the first thing that interested me. But it really began when I was in my teens, when my mother gave me a copy of A Passage to India. I really came into it from literature-only later did I turn to religious literature. I read Rumer Godden's Mooltiki, and other stories and poems of India (1957) and I read Kipling's Jungle Books. Then I read the Upanishads, and it was just so fascinating to me. I was raised by atheist and communist parents, so we had no religion whatsoever.
Wendy Doniger
Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
In the middle of the last century there was comparatively little movement of workmen from place to place; but Adam Smith's fierce attack on the law of settlement shows that migration was on the increase. The world was, in fact, on the eve of an industrial revolution; and it is interesting to remember that the two men who did most to bring it about, Adam Smith and James Watt, met, as I have mentioned, in Glasgow, when one was dreaming of the book, and the other of the invention, which were to introduce a new industrial age.
Arnold Toynbee
As Lavoisier was from the first accused by the English chemists of having acted unfairly toward them, and as indeed his own claim only dates back to June 25, 1783, he may be dismissed from further consideration; and during the lives of the English claimants there were no public complaints on either side, although Watt, in private letters to his friends, hinted at Cavendish's incapacity and unfairness.
Henry Cavendish
We may well call it black diamonds. Every basket is power and civilization. For coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself withersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
