I am not interested in the past. I am interested in the future, for that is where I expect to spend the rest of my life.

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.

When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I'd place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: "Leave slide rules here." If I didn't do that, I'd find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he'd be on his feet saying, "Boss, you can't do it."

What I believe is that, by proper effort, we make the future almost anything we want to make it.

All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new.

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.

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