Charles Kettering Quotes

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 could do nothing without my problems; they toughen my mind. In fact, I tell my assistants not to bring me their successes for they weaken me, but rather to bring me their problems, for they strengthen me.

Research is an organized method of trying to find out what you are going to do after you cannot do what you are doing now. It may also be said to be the method of keeping a customer reasonably dissatisfied with what he has. That means constant improvement and change so that the customer will be stimulated to desire the new product enough to buy it to replace the one he has.

If you're doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.

The difference between intelligence and an education is this: that intelligence will make a good living for you, but education won't do much for you at all.

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

Every father should remember one day his son will follow his example, not his advice.

99 percent of success is built on failure.

Education is man's going forward from cocksure ignorance to thoughtful uncertainty.Where there is an open mind there will always be a frontier.

If I want to stop a research program I can always do it by getting a few experts to sit in on the subject, because they know right away that it was a fool thing to try in the first place.

There has never been any 30-hour week for men who had anything to do.

We have been measuring too much in terms of the dollar. What we should do is think in terms of useful materials-things that will be of value to us in our daily life.

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

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

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

A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.

It is easy to build a philosophy - it doesn't have to run

Bankers regard research as most dangerous a thing that makes banking hazardous due to the rapid changes it brings about in industry.

Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think the fellow was crazy, then you want to pay some attention to that. One of you is likely to be, and you had better find out which one it is. It makes an awful lot of difference.

Action without intelligence is a form of insanity, but intelligence without action is the greatest form of stupidity in the world.

The person who doesn't know something can't be done will often find a way to go ahead and do it.

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.

It is man's destiny to ponder on the riddle of existence and, as a byproduct of his wonderment, to create a new life on this earth.

I often say that research is a way of finding out what you are going to do when you can't keep on doing what you are doing now.

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

I expect to spend the rest of my life in the future, so I want to be reasonably sure of what kind of future it's going to be. That is my reason for planning.

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

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

Failures, repeated failures, are sign-posts on the road to achievement. The only time you don't want to fail is the last time you try something (and it works).

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.

here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.

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

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

Don't be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don't follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it's enough.

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.

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.

I've never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.

There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

We suffer not from overproduction but from undercirculation. You have heard of technocracy. I wish I had those fellows for my competitors. I'd like to take the automobile it is said they predicted could be made now that would last fifty years. Even if never used, this automobile would not be worth anything except to a junkman in ten years, because of the changes in men's tastes and ideas. This desire for change is an inherent quality in human nature, so that the present generation must not try to crystallize the needs of the future ones.

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

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.

We are just in the kindergarten of uncovering things; there is no downcurve in science.

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

Great steps in human progress are made by things that don't work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don't, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress.

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.

We must look forward to the future as that is where most of us will be spending the rest of our lives.

We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions.