Devise Quotes

#1. It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.

Alex Filippenko

#2. There is no pattern the human mind can devise that does not exist already within the bounds of nature ... Everything we do, see, write, notate, all are an echo of the deep seams of the universe. Music is the invisible world made visible through sound.

Kate Mosse

#3. Nothing is truly unnatural, because everything that exists, including human intelligence, is a product of nature. If human intelligence can devise ways for the genes from two men to result in a child, their doing so is an entirely natural event.

A.C. Grayling

#4. Music takes me to places of illimitable sensual and insensate joy, accessing points of ecstasy that no angelic lover could ever locate, or plunging me into gibbering weeping hells of pain that no torturer could ever devise.

Stephen Fry

#5. Devise a simple strategy so you can sleep at night.

Walter Schloss

#6. If we can put a man on the moon and sequence the human genome, we should be able to devise something close to a universal digital public library.

Peter Singer

#7. At the individual level, if we can identify the psychological mechanisms linking adverse environments to psychosis (and there has been a lot of progress with this despite minimal funding) we should be able to devise more effective interventions for those who are already ill.

Richard Bentall

#8. The thing about genius is it will never yield to circumstances. Genius regards what's given as the beginning of its need to find or devise something else.

June Jordan

#9. All-good, like the vain, capricious, cruel God of Job? With all of eternity at His disposal, what fiendish new tortures might He not devise? A limited

William Peter Blatty

#10. Even the gods couldn't devise a fates so twisted.

Rick Riordan

#11. What are you trying to prove? Do you think if you kill enough people in the worst ways imaginable they'll give you a name like the Madman, or the Butcher? It doesn't matter how many abhorrent tortures you devise. You'll always be the Pinhead.

Clive Barker

#12. In old times people used to try and square the circle; now they try and devise schemes for satisfying the Irish nation.

Samuel Butler

#13. The Penny Post will do more for the circulation of ideas, for the fostering of domestic affections, for the humanizing of the mass generally, than any other single measure that our national wit can devise.

Harriet Martineau

#14. In the last century, as we learned more about genes, we were able to devise ways of accelerating evolution.

Nina Fedoroff

#15. I believe the stars are the headlights of angels driving from heaven to save us
to save us ... Won't you look at the sky?
They're driving from heaven into our eyes. And though final words are so hard to devise, I promise that I'll always remember your pretty eyes.

David Berman

#16. The highest exercise of imagination is not to devise what has no existence, but rather to perceive what really exists, though unseen by the outward eye-not creation, but insight.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

#17. [Gertrude Stein] really needed someone like Virgil Thomson, whom she respected, to sit on her a bit and make her devise some plot.

James Laughlin

#18. Scandal often does as much harm to the listeners as to those who devise it, even if it were to do no other harm than disturb the mind, as it does, and give rise to temptations to speak or write about it to others.

Vincent De Paul

#19. It seems the EPA has worked hard to devise new regulations that are designed to eliminate coal mining, coal burning, usage of coal.

Hal Rogers

#20. If you can tell stories, create characters, devise incidents, and have sincerity and passion, it doesn't matter a damn how you write.

W. Somerset Maugham

#21. You can devise all the plans in the world, but if you don't welcome spontaneity; you will just disappoint yourself.

Abigail Biddinger

#22. Thus were formed those immense coalfields, which nevertheless, are not inexhaustible, and which three centuries at the present accelerated rate of consumption will exhaust unless the industrial world will devise a remedy.

Jules Verne

#23. I mean, have you ever tried to devise a mutually beneficial win-win solution with a guy who thinks he's the messiah? It

Chris Voss

#24. We are alone. Live our lives, lacking anything better to do. Devise reason later.

Alan Moore

#25. It is a very easy thing to devise good laws; the difficulty is to make them effective. The great mistake is that of looking upon men as virtuous, or thinking that they can be made so by laws; and consequently the greatest art of a politician is to render vices serviceable to the cause of virtue.

Henry St John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke

#26. This is a strange Christmas Eve,"Churchill told the the crowd of several hundred gathered at the mansion's garden."Almost the whole world is locked in deadly struggle, and with the most terrible weapons which science can devise the nations advance upon each other.

Winston S. Churchill

#27. The modern mind tends to be more and more critical and analytical in spirit, hence it must devise for itself an engine of expression which is logically defensible at every point and which tends to correspond to the rigorous spirit of modern science.

Edward Sapir

#28. My great objective as a parliamentarian was to dramatise the deficiencies and devise practical government programs to deal with them. It was a cause that went to the heart of our way of life.

Gough Whitlam

#29. I hate government. I hate power. I think that man's existence, insofar as he achieves anything, is to resist power, to minimize power, to devise systems of society in which power is the least exerted.

Malcolm Muggeridge

#30. A church is not a Fortune 500 company. It's not simply another nonprofit organization, nor is it a social club. In fact, a healthy church is unlike any organization that man has ever devised, because man didn't devise it.

Mark Dever

#31. Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out;

Thomas More

#32. Would you believe I devise my entire show based upon a single one of these jewels? It's true I choose a color from my collection ( ... ) and with it I can imagine a whole world.

Dita Von Teese

#33. To devise an information processing system capable of getting along on its own - it must handle its own problems of programming, bookkeeping, communication and coordination with its users. It must appear to its users as a single, integrated personality.

Cliff Shaw

#34. The challenge for the principal, then, is to devise incentives to ensure that she (the agent) will act in the best interest of her principal. This

Janine Wedel

#35. Architecture was the last of the major professions to devise a formal 'cursus honorum' before its practice could be undertaken.

Martin Filler

#36. Adults devise a plan and follow it, children do what feels good.

Dave Ramsey

#37. It is possible that these may all be insufficient to control the caprice and wickedness of man. But are they not all that government will admit, and all that human prudence can devise?

James Madison

#38. Without a doubt, the most ingenious plan I could ever hope to devise would be to trade my plans for God's.

Craig D. Lounsbrough

#39. The widow employed her woman's malice to devise a system of covert persecution.

Honore De Balzac

#40. Expert chess playing, for example, was once thought to epitomize human intellection. In the view of several experts in the late fifties: "If one could devise a successful chess machine, one would seem to have penetrated to the core of human intellectual endeavor.

Nick Bostrom

#41. Oh Thou, who Man of baser Earth didst make,
And ev'n with Paradise devise the snake;
For all the Sin wherewith the Face of Man
Is blackened - Man's forgiveness give and take!

Omar Khayyam

#42. The whole world is a gigantic legacy. Imagine having to start afresh each generation: who would invent the wheel, devise the lever, construct the alphabet and multiplication table? I could not; could you?

Sydney J. Harris

#43. There is no way to devise an objective and non-arbitrary measure for comparing the overall complexity of any two given languages.

Guy Deutscher

#44. WE MUST DEVISE A SYSTEM IN WHICH PEACE IS MORE REWARDING THAN WAR.

Margaret Mead

#45. What then is the purpose of national education? Rather than devise complex theoretical interpretations, it is better to start by looking to the lovely child who sits on your knee and ask yourself: What can I do to assure this child will be able to lead the happiest life possible?

Tsunesaburo Makiguchi

#46. It was clear that everything considered important and good was insignificant and repulsive, and that all this glamour and luxury hid the old well-known crimes, which not only remained unpunished but were adorned with all the splendor men can devise.

Leo Tolstoy

#47. From out the peaceful hollow of its throat / such music pours as I am unaware / how to devise. I did not think these things. / It is the reed that sings.

Alice Smith

#48. We'd have to devise a plan, probably a rather Pyrrhic and unsatisfactory one.

Donna Tartt

#49. In difficult ground, press on; In encircled ground, devise stratagems; In death ground, fight.

Sun Tzu

#50. Of justice you will find none.... To judge is evil. To mete justice, more appalling still. Act from compassion and you will do better than to devise any code or facade of justice.

Jessica Amanda Salmonson

#51. Is it really beyond our wits to devise some form of censorship which would trap only the crudely sadistic?

Storm Jameson

#52. Now to enjoy the treasures of God in the similitude of God, is the most perfect blessedness God could devise. For the treasures of God are the most perfect treasures, and the manner of God is the most perfect manner.

Thomas Traherne

#53. And when the old deception of a supernatural and God-appointed authority had dwindled away these men were only concerned to devise a new one which like its predecessor should make it possible to hold the people in bondage to a limited number of rulers.

Mahatma Gandhi

#54. They all believed that ideas are not "out there" waiting to be discovered, but are tools - like forks and knives and microchips - that people devise to cope with the world in which they find themselves.

Louis Menand

#55. In my whole career, in fact, I can remember only two first nights when a show was at its peak on the first night. And I just wish we could devise a system where critics came not on a single evening but were given a choice of performances to attend.

Richard McCabe

#56. The poverty of our imagination is no measure of say the world's resources. Our posterity will no doubt get fuel in ways that we are unable to devise for them.

George Eliot

#57. The Church of Rome ... has become the most lawless den of thieves, the most shameless of all brothels, the very kingdom of sin, death and hell; so that not even antichrist ,if he were to come, could devise any addition to its wickedness.

Martin Luther

#58. I always devise a background so that it makes what your character goes through logical and keeps up the continuity.

Dexter Fletcher

#59. SANCTIFIED MATURED FERTILE UNIVERSAL CREATIVE SOUL MIRACLE WILL POWER WILL DEVISE DIVINE EXISTENCE BY SALVATION

Various

#60. In each human heart terror survives The ravin it has gorged: the loftiest fear All that they would disdain to think were true: Hypocrisy and custom make their minds The fanes of many a worship, now outworn. They dare not devise good for man's estate, And yet they know not that they do not dare.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

#61. Carefully study the well-being of your men, and do not overtax them. Concentrate your energy and hoard your strength. Keep your army continually on the move, and devise unfathomable plans.

Sun Tzu

#62. You devise ways to tell a story that complies with your sensibility. Style and method are really extensions of your present sensibility.

Aleksandar Hemon

#63. Animals don't behave like men,' he said. 'If they have to fight, they fight; and if they have to kill they kill. But they don't sit down and set their wits to work to devise ways of spoiling other creatures' lives and hurting them. They have dignity and animality.

Richard Adams

#64. When it comes to investing, my suggestion is to first understand your strengths and weaknesses, and then devise a simple strategy so that you can sleep at night!

Walter Schloss

#65. A startup's job is to (1) rigorously measure where it is right now, confronting the hard truths that assessment reveals, and then (2) devise experiments to learn how to move the real numbers closer to the ideal reflected in the business plan.

Eric Ries

#66. Death is the mother of beauty, mystical,
Within whose burning bosom we devise
Our earthly mothers waiting, sleeplessly.

Wallace Stevens

#67. When one approach is not working to reach the desired goal, that's not a reason to abandon the goal. Instead, it is time to devise another approach.

Ralph Marston

#68. The Journey of Reconciliation was organized not only to devise techniques for eliminating Jim Crow in travel, but also as a training ground for similar peaceful projects against discrimination in such major areas as employment and in the armed services.

Bayard Rustin

#69. Writing a poem is like having an affair, a one-night stand; a short story is a romance, a relationship; a novel is a marriage-one has to be cunning, devise compromises, and make sacrifices.

Amos Oz

#70. Then Prometheus, in his perplexity as to what preservation he could devise, stole from Hephaestus and Athena wisdom in the arts together with fire
since by no means without fire could it be acquired or helpfully used by any
and he handed it there and then as a gift to man.

Plato

#71. Possession of the pure synthetic specimens of the anthocyanidins and chief anthocyanins enabled my wife and me to devise quick tests for these colouring matters which can be used with the material from a few flower petals.

Robert Robinson

#72. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, Armageddon will be at our door.

Douglas MacArthur

#73. Piter: Ah-ah, Baron! Is it not regrettable you were unable to devise this delicious scheme by yourself?
Baron: Someday I will have you strangled, Piter.
Piter: Of a certainty, Baron. Enfin! But a kind act is never lost, eh?
Baron: Have you been chewing verite or semuta, Piter?

Frank Herbert

#74. The best (remedy) I can devise would be to give future commissions to (federal) judges for six years with a re-appointability by the President with the approbation of both houses. If this would not be independence enough, I know not what would be ...

Thomas Jefferson

#75. You have to face the fact that the whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this all while not appearing to.

Richard M. Nixon

#76. Until we devise means of discovering workers who are temperamentally irked by monotony it will be well to take for granted that the majority of human beings cannot safely be regimented at work without relief in the form of education and recreation and pleasant surroundings.

Mary Barnett Gilson

#77. The role of humankind is to use the cultural and social environment it has created to devise new global values ... Human relations with nature are intimately bound up in interpersonal relations and with the relation of the self and its inner life.

Daisaku Ikeda

#78. It is impossible to devise a scientific experiment to describe the creation process, or even to ascertain whether such a process can take place. The Creator does not create at the whim of a scientist.

Henry M. Morris

#79. If you learn only methods, you'll be tied to your methods, but if you learn principles you can devise your own methods.

Ray Bradbury

#80. It is only those who know how to feel that "this is not good" who devise improvements.

Friedrich Nietzsche

#81. Human ingenuity," wrote Leonardo da Vinci, whose Vitruvian Man became the ultimate symbol of the intersection of art and science, "will never devise any inventions more beautiful, nor more simple, nor more to the purpose than Nature does.

Walter Isaacson

#82. We each devise our means of escape from the intolerable.

William Styron

#83. Adieu, valour: rust, rapier: be still, drum, for your manager is in love: yea, he loveth. Assist me, some extemporal god of rhyme, for I am sure I shall turn sonnet. Devise, wit: write, pen, for I am for whole volumes in folio.

William Shakespeare

#84. I thought you wouldn't want weepy words of love and all that.'
Belle swatted him on the shoulder. 'Of course I do! Every woman does. Especially from the man she actually wants to accept. So devise some weepy words and I'll-'
'Aha! So you accept!

Julia Quinn

#85. Nature has a surer plan than mortals can devise.

Janet Morris

#86. I don't for one moment believe that these folks believe that it is better for an infant or a toddler to be in day care than to be home with Mom. I do believe that these folks feel guilty for not wanting to be at home, so they devise a new reality to compensate for their uncomfortable feelings.

Laura Schlessinger

#87. There is something about wills which brings out the worst side of human nature. People who under ordinary circumstances are perfectly upright and amiable, go as curly as corkscrews and foam at the mouth, whenever they hear the words 'I devise and bequeath.

Dorothy L. Sayers

#88. Devise some creed, and live it, beyond theirs,
Or I shall think you but their spendthrift heirs.

Edmund Blunden

#89. Just as the ability to devise simple but evocative models is the signature of the great scientist so overelaboration and overparameterization is often the mark of mediocrity.

George E.P. Box

#90. To lovers, I devise their imaginary world, with whatever they may need, as the stars of the sky, the red, red roses by the wall, the snow of the hawthorn, the sweet strains of music, and aught else they may desire to figure to each other the lastingness and beauty of their love.

Williston Fish

#91. Similar to Churchill's view that "democracy is the worst form of government except all the others that have been tried," although it is by no means a bulletproof theory, the CAPM is the best theory to explain the risk/return relationship that the greatest financial minds have been able to devise.

Matthew Krantz

#92. This is not my prison. I carry it with me. We devise cages of our own choosing.

Bernie Mcgill

#93. The best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for good seamanship.

Chester W. Nimitz

#94. Yet we flatter our strength unduly when we compare it even to a reed stick! For whatever vain men devise and babble concerning these matters is but smoke. Therefore Augustine with good reason often repeats the famous statement that free will is by its defenders more trampled down than strengthened.

John Calvin

#95. I recoil with horror at the ferociousness of man. Will nations never devise a more rational umpire of differences than force? Are there no means of coercing injustice more gratifying to our nature than a waste of the blood of thousands and of the labor of millions of our fellow creatures?

Thomas Jefferson

#96. Perhaps the nuclear physicists have come so near to the ultimate secrets that He thinks it time to bring their activities to a stop. And what simpler method could He devise than to let them carry their ingenuity to the point where they exterminate the human race?

Bertrand Russell

#97. Men and women may devise plans to satisfy their inner longings, but in the midst of all the "religions" of the world, God's way is available in the Bible for all who will come to Him on His terms.

Billy Graham

#98. I found it liberating of necessity to devise my own style and my own tactics and to look for a voice on the instrument because there weren't really any that impacted strongly on me.

Steve Swallow

#99. [T]he artillery of the press has been leveled against us, charged with whatsoever its licentiousness could devise or dare. These abuses of an institution so important to freedom and science are deeply to be regretted ...

Thomas Jefferson

#100. How long before we devise a means of telling horoscopes with gas lamps?

K.J. Bishop