That is the key to history. Terrific energy is expended - civilizations are built up - excellent institutions devised; but each time something goes wrong. Some fatal flaw always brings the selfish and the cruel people to the top and it all slides back into misery and ruin. - C.S. Lewis
I really feel as if the things we create together are not things we devised, but things we discovered, as if, in some sense, they were always there in us, waiting to be revealed, like the figure of Mercury waiting in a rough lump of marble. - Raymond Joseph Teller
. . . the mysteries, on belief in which theology would hang the destinies of mankind, are cunningly devised fables whose origin and growth are traceable to the age of Ignorance, the mother of credulity. - Edward Clodd
A good story cannot be devised; it has to be distilled. - Raymond Chandler
We have found a strange footprint on the shores of the unknown. We have devised profound theories, one after another, to account for its origins. At last, we have succeeded in reconstructing the creature that made the footprint. And lo! It is our own. - Sir Arthur Eddington
There was never anything by the wit of man so well devised, or so sure established, which in continuance of time hath not been corrupted. - Book of Common Prayer
In a scheme of policy which is devised for a nation, we should not limit our views to its operation during a single year, or even for a short term of years. We should look at its operation for a considerable time, and in war as well as in peace. - Henry Clay
As fast as laws are devised, their evasion is contrived. - German Proverb
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reason why. - James Joyce
A kiss is a course of procedure cunningly devised, for the mutual stopage of speech at a moment when words are superfluous. - Oliver Herford
Don’t make any plans, because there is only one plan which really works and that is not even devised by you - Alok Jagawat
Mercy is a contingency plan, devised by the guilty in the eventuality that they are caught. Justice is the domain of the just. - Richard Rahl - Terry Goodkind
A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking. - Ralph Waldo Emerson
Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins commited in previous lives. - James Joyce
Democracy is worth dying for, because it's the most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. - Ronald Reagan
Not only is this not love; I think it is the most diabolical unfairness that was ever taught or devised. - Ruth Hurmence Green
No other work of man in any language even faintly resembles the intricate structure and design of the Bible. The fact remains – only an infinite mind could have devised this Book of books. - Winkie Pratney
The psychosphere, the logosphere, is permeated by concepts, ideas, verbalizations, a whole apparatus devised, or rather evolved, to form some sort of mental contact with reality--or to block it off. That is, a large circle of the "thinking," "educated" class take ideas as more veridical than facts. - Robert Conquest