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Sir Richard Arkwright
(23 Dec 1732 - 3 Aug 1792)
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Quotes by others about Sir Richard Arkwright (3)
As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it.
In science its main worth is temporary, as a stepping-stone to something beyond. Even the Principia, as Newton with characteristic modesty entitled his great work, is truly but the beginning of a natural philosophy, and no more an ultimate work, than Watt’s steam-engine, or Arkwright's spinning-machine.
This quality of genius is, sometimes, difficult to be distinguished from talent, because high genius includes talent. It is talent, and something more. The usual distinction between genius and talent is, that one represents creative thought, the other practical skill: one invents, the other applies. But the truth is, that high genius applies its own inventions better than talent alone can do. A man who has mastered the higher mathematics, does not, on that account, lose his knowledge of arithmetic. Hannibal, Napoleon, Shakespeare, Newton, Scott, Burke, Arkwright, were
they not men of talent as well as men of genius?
See also:
- 23 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Arkwright's birth.
- The Arkwrights: Spinners of Fortune, by R.S Fitton. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Richard Arkwright.