Charles Kettering Quotes & Sayings

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One fails forward toward success. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required blood and sweat and tears. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

99 percent of success is built on failure. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

You must take the problem as it is, and let it be what it wants to be. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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 ... — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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." — Charles Kettering

Don't bring anything to me but trouble. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved. — Charles Kettering

The price of progress is trouble. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

Great steps in human progress are made by things that don't work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don't, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress. — Charles Kettering

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). — Charles Kettering

Learn how to fail intelligently. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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

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

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering

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. — Charles Kettering