James Dyson Quotes

Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.

Everyone has ideas. They may be too busy or lack the confidence or technical ability to carry them out. But I want to carry them out. It is a matter of getting up and doing it.

My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything.

Anger is a good motivator.

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic.

Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.

The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy.

I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.

Engineers are behind the cars we drive, the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.

At school, I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.

Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business.

The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.

In the digital age of "overnight" success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it.

A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that's the point when you should push a little harder. I use the analogy of running a race. It seems as though you can’t carry on, but if you just get through the pain barrier, you'll see the end and be okay. Often, just around the corner is where the solution will happen.

Failure is so much more interesting because you learn from it. That's what we should be teaching children at school, that being successful the first time, there's nothing in it. There's no interest, you learn nothing actually.

I learned that the moment you want to slow down is the moment you should accelerate.

I just want things to work properly.

The important thing is to learn from mistakes - something graduates are adept at. Our graduate engineers are working on new technology - from uncharted applications for our digital motor, to a new take on the hand dryer. With an unhindered mind, nothing is off limits.

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment.

What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.

Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.

The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.

I think people are realizing that engineering and science are extremely good degrees to get and you'll be very highly paid once you've got them.

Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures-some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success ... Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else.

Hire inexperience. This year we plan to hire 200 engineers - half of whom are recent grads. Young people are not burdened by years of experience. They haven't learned - or been told - what is right or wrong. With engineering, there is no tried and tested path. You try, and fail, and fix, and fail again.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.

Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.

If you want to do something different, you’re going to come up against a lot of naysayers.

Britain's great strength is its innovative, design and engineering natural ability and we're not using it.

Cordless vacuums are designed for quick jobs, but you need enough power to do the job; you don't want the power waning over time.

All our engineers are designers and all our designers are engineers.

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.

There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence - and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.

Reality TV is anything but.

I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don't necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs.

Some of the best inventive moments are born out of 'wrong thinking'. Most people start with the right way so they all follow the same path. The wrong way will lead to mistakes from which you can learn and create new discoveries-the kind of original ideas that come to life when we dare to be different, keep an open mind, and have no fear of failure.

China can and will be an invaluable trading partner to both the U.S. and the U.K.

We have to change our culture so you can create wealth from making things and don't just try to make money out of money

Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.

Fear is always a good motivator.

Success is made of 99% failure.

Engineering undergraduates should not be charged fees. They should receive grants, not student loans, and the government will get the money back long-term from increased exports.

After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology

Emerging markets are hugely important.

I've fought court battles over my inventions before.