Necessity is the mother of invention, but it helps if there’s an inventor in the room.
From Taking Everything into Account, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The gutter on the north side came loose in Tuesday's wind and has been hanging since, and every bird on the block has had an opinion about it. Switch spent an hour yesterday trying to lever it back with an acorn, which is exactly as effective as it sounds, and then sat under it looking betrayed. I used to believe that a hard enough problem produces its own solution, that the want of a thing calls the thing into being; I believed that for most of my first ten years. Necessity is the mother of invention, but it helps if there's an inventor in the room. This morning a man came with a ladder and two screws and it took him four minutes. The gutter had been necessary to nobody but him.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
Have it on something
More like it
- The old road has lots of twists and turns but few surprises.
- Better to stumble on the right path than stride forward on the wrong one.
- No matter where you look for it, the sun only rises in the east.
- A know-it-all doesn’t and doesn’t know that he doesn’t.
- We have learned so much about how to make a better world, but not learned enough.
- The beginning of naming is the end of knowing.