I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there.
— Charles Kettering
No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.
If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.
An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.
One fails forward toward success.
Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.
The only time you mustn't fail is the last time you try.
A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.
We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently... to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.
Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.
You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.
It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.
There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.
In America we can say what we think, and even if we can't think, we can say it anyhow.
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.
Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.
You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.
It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.
My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
You can be sincere and still be stupid.
