Charles Kettering Quotes

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

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

99 percent of success is built on failure.

We have a lot of people revolutionizing the world because they've never had to present a working model.

Learn how to fail intelligently.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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."

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).

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

The price of progress is trouble.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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 ...

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.

The typical eye sees the ten per cent bad of an idea and overlooks the ninety per cent good.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.

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

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

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

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.

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

You are always too late with a development if you are so slow that people demand it before you yourself recognize it. The research department should have foreseen what was necessary and had it ready to a point where people never knew they wanted it until it was made available to them.