Charles Kettering Quotes (48 Quotes)


    Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.


    If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four year course, we could end up with all theory and no music. When we study music, we start to practice from the beginning, and we practice for the entire time, because there is

    An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. He tries and fails maybe a 1000 times. If he succeeds once then he's in.

    The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required 'blood and sweat and tears


    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.

    If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.


    You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.

    Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are fingcr posts on thc road to achievement. The only time you don't fail is the last time you try something, and it works. One fails forward toward success.

    The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.

    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.

    In America we can say what we think, and even if we can't think, we can say it anyhow.

    People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

    The only difference between intelligence and education is this intelligence will make you a good living

    No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.

    If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.

    Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.

    We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.




    People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they're exactly like the old ones.

    It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

    An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.

    The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

    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.

    Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.

    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.

    An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.


    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.


    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.

    The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.


    High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.


    We have a lot of people revolutionizing the world because they've never had to present a working model.

    A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

    The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.

    Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.

    Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down.

    I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there.

    My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

    There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.

    I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done.

    I don't want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can't be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn't know a thing can't be done - and he goes ahead and does it.


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