James Watt

It is a most disagreeable thing to be obliged to listen to flattery.

I have been so much occupied with the steam engine that I have almost forgotten how to love.

The world is a great game, and I am but a small player.

I have been so much engaged in business that I have had no time to be lazy.

It is a great pity that men cannot live without ambition.

The great object of all improvements in the steam-engine is to make it do more work with less fuel.

I have been much employed in contriving a method of preventing the waste of steam in the engine.

The world is not so much in need of new truths as it is of new applications of old truths.

I am not a man of letters, but a man of business.

The true value of a thing is what it will produce.

I have been much employed in contriving a method of preventing the waste of steam in the engine, and I think I have succeeded.

My head is so full of the engine that I can think of nothing else.

The greatest good you can do for another is not just to share your riches but to reveal to him his own.

I have a most intense and passionate aversion to the idea of being useless.

The progress of invention is not a straight line, but a zigzag.

I have been much employed in contriving a method of preventing the waste of steam in the engine, and I think I have succeeded in a great measure.

I am not a man of letters, but a man of business, and therefore I must be excused for not writing often.

The true value of a thing is what it will produce, and not what it will cost.

My head is so full of the engine that I can think of nothing else, and I am almost mad with it.

I have a most intense and passionate aversion to the idea of being useless, and I hope I shall never be so.