Charles Kettering Quotations

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.

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

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.

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.

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

The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.

Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.

You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.

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.

An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously.

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.

People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

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

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

There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.

The only time you mustn't fail is the last time you try.

My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.

A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.

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.

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

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

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

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

We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

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

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

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

We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently... to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

99 percent of success is built on failure.

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

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.

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.

If we taught music the way we try to teach engineering, in an unbroken four year course, we could end up with all theory and no music. When we study music, we start to practice from the beginning, and we practice for the entire time...

Research means that you don't know, but are willing to find out.

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

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

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.

We work day after day, not to finish things; but to make the future better ... because we will spend the rest of our lives there.

The difference between intelligence and an education is this-that intelligence will make you a good living.

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.

One fails forward toward success.

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

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).

It is the 'follow through' that makes the great difference between ultimate success and failure, because it is so easy to stop.

Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.

Do not bring me your successes; they weaken me. Bring me your problems; they strengthen me.

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.

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

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

Industry prospers when it offers people articles which they want more than they want anything they now have. The fact is that people never buy what they need. They buy what they want.

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.

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.

I don't want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can't be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn't know a thing can't be done - and he goes ahead and does it.

Every honest researcher I know admits he's just a professional amateur. He's doing whatever he's doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he's going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.

The opportunities in this world are as great as we have the imagination to see them... but we never get that view from the bottom of the nest.

Don't bring anything to me but trouble.

Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely the best teacher, but the only possible teacher.. There is no war between theory and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the theory should supplement the practice and not precede it.

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

Learn how to fail intelligently.

A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.

Obsolescence is a factor which says that the new thing I bring you is worth more than the unused value of the old thing.

The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.

Why is the human skull as dense as it is? Nowadays we can send a message around the world in one-seventh of a second, but it takes years to drive an idea through a quarter-inch of human skull.

you must take the problem as it is, and let it be what it wants to be.

And there is the point exactly, we are all the time blaming difficulties on to something else. Our real trouble is that we are too soft to solve the problem.

The key to economic prosperity is the organized creation of dissatisfaction.

Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.

People see the wrongness in an idea much quicker that the rightness.

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.

One of the things we have to be thankful for is that we don't get as much government as we pay for.

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

You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man's head to the inside.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.

If I have had any success, it's due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.

In many ways ideas are more important than people - they are much more permanent.

The sure ways to create new ventures of discovery are to keep an open mind.

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.

A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.

The simplest way to assure sales is to keep changing the product the market for new things is indefinitely elastic. One of the fundamental purposes of advertising, styling, and research is to foster a healthy dissatisfaction.

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

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

The price of progress is trouble.

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."