James Watt

Nature can be conquered if we can but find her weak side.

I have made an engine that shall not waste a single particle of steam.

The power of steam is like a wild horse; it must be harnessed with precision.

I would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a patent dispute.

The steam engine is my child, and I shall see it grow.

Every inefficiency in machinery is an insult to the engineer.

I have spent more time fixing other men's mistakes than making my own.

The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what we do here.

In the mean time do all you can to cure him of Bashfullness which will ruin him in this impudent age; but beware he be not led into the opposite vice of self conceit or arrogance which is 1000 times worse.

Dr Priestly (sic) was once very ill with gall stones & was cured by abstinence from Butcher meat. ... fish & vegetables & butter or fat did not hurt him when taken in moderation, but his Doctors must know better than I do what is good for him.

groped in the dark, misled by many an ignis fatuus, but nature has a weak side, if we can only find it out.

He says that he got the idea from a lobster's tail.

I can think of nothing else than this machine.

The people in London are all steam engine mad.

It is not worth my while to manufacture in three countries only; but I can find it very worthwhile to make it for the whole world.

About 6 or 8 years ago My Ingenious friend Mr John Robinson having [contrived] conceived that a fire engine might be made without a Lever—by Inverting the Cylinder & placing it above the mouth of the pit proposed to me to make a model of it which was set about by having never Compleated & I [being] having at that time Ignorant little knoledge of the machine however I always thought the Machine Might be applied to [more] other as valuable purposes [than] as drawing Water.

I had gone on a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon. 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.

When once the idea of the separate condensation was started, all these improvements followed as corollaries in quick succession, so that in the course of one or two days the invention was thus far complete in my mind, and I immediately set about an experiment to verify it practically.

I had gone to take a walk on a fine Sabbath afternoon, early in 1765... I was thinking upon the engine at the time... 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 would rather face a loaded cannon than settle a disputed account or make a bargain.