I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.

The biggest failure of man is that he gives up before he realizes how close he was to success.

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.

The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization.... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation

I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.

Being busy does not always mean real work.

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.