Dean Kamen Quotes (33 Quotes)

The city needs a car like a fish needs a bicycle.

Fifty percent of the world's population now lives in cities, those are the people who need this, ... We still get around cities the way the Greeks did 5,000 years ago they put on sandals, we put on sneakers.

We can't live any more in a world which is based on stuff and not ideas. If you want to live with the world of stuff, we're all doomed.

A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention.

I'm a human entropy producer.

There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am working on things that matter.

Everybody has to be able to participate in a future that they want to live for. That's what technology can do.

As we move towards 8 or 10 billion people on the planet, there's a little less gold per capita. Each one of us will continue to be fighting over an ever smaller percentage of total resources. This is not a happy thought.

I consider high-speed data transmission an invention that became a major innovation. It changed the way we all communicate.

I don't want to think about how many people have thought or still think that I'm crazy.

My biggest worry is I'm running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time.

If you're going to fail, you might as well fail at the big ones.

To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.

An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.

In some cases, inventions prohibit innovation because we're so caught up in playing with the technology, we forget about the fact that it was supposed to be important.

If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.

I started realizing that I wasn't so dumb; rather, most people simply didn't know the answers to the questions that I was interested in-or they didn't care.

I don't work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people.

New ideas in technology are literally a dime-a-dozen, or cheaper than that.

The goal is to create in the culture passion among kids to do something. I think the trouble is our culture does create a passion for kids, but their passion is related to one of two industries entertainment or sports.

People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.

It's up to you to work with them to make it interesting for them to want to pursue engineering. You need to instill the passion for tools and science, as much as they now have for nonsense.

I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life.

I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.

Sometimes we crash and burn. It's better to do it in private.

Innovation needs to be nurtured throughout an organization. Management is doing things right, whereas leadership is doing the right things.

We have a promising project, but nothing of the Earth-shattering nature that people are conjuring up.

You have teenagers thinking they're going to make millions as NBA stars when that's not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.

I don't know what innovation is, but I can give a guide to rude realities and somewhat serious suggestions about innovation and how to approach it.

Most of the time you will fail, but you will also occasionally succeed. Those occasional successes make all the hard work and sacrifice worthwhile.

I'd rather lose my own money than someone else's.

Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections.

My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about.