Charles Kettering
23 quotes
Biography
Charles Franklin Kettering sometimes known as Charles Fredrick Kettering was an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947.
"One fails forward toward success."
"You know, you read about the future. You can't help that. I don't look upon the future. I am not a politician. I am not worried about the future at all. I don't like to run it down. I don't like to think of it being too dark because I expect to spend all the rest of my life there and I don't want to have a nasty end to it."
"The whole fun of living is trying to make something better."
"A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true."
"The key to economic prosperity is the organized creation of dissatisfaction."
"Logic is a way of going wrong systematically."
"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."
"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."
"We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won't try the thing."
"Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering, editor Thomas Alvin Boyd, 1961"
"More Tales of Boss Ket: An Informal and Unpublished Sequel to the Book, "Professional Amateur, the Biography of Charles Franklin Kettering", Thomas Alvin Boyd, 1969"
"An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn't take his education too seriously."
"It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world."
"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."
"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."
"A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere."
"People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people."
"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."
"Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress."
"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."
"Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax."
"If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it."