Charles Kettering Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of Charles Kettering's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Inventor Charles Kettering's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 102 quotes on this page collected since August 29, 1876! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
  • A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.

    Science   Men  
    Charles Franklin Kettering (1959*). “In Memoriam, Charles F. 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.

    The Scientific American, p. 243, August 1934.
  • 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.

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

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

  • 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.

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

    "Dynamic Work Simplification" by W. Clements Zinck, (p. 12), 1971.
  • 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.

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

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

    Attributed to Charles Kettering in Ben Reed "Future Technology in Law Enforcement" (p. 15), 2009.
  • 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.

    Science  
  • 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 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.

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

    Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”
  • Do not bring me your successes; they weaken me. Bring me your problems; they strengthen me.

  • 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.

    Science  
    Charles Franklin Kettering (1935). “Industrial Prospecting”
  • People see the wrongness in an idea much quicker that the rightness.

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

  • 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 Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”
  • 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.

    Inspirational   Men   Sky  
    Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”
  • Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

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

    Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”
  • The sure ways to create new ventures of discovery are to keep an open mind.

  • 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.

    Science  
  • The difference between intelligence and an education is this: that intelligence will make a good living for you, but education won't do much for you at all.

    "Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. 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.

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

  • 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.

    Science  
    Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. 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.

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

    Charles Franklin Kettering (1961). “Prophet of progress: selections from the speeches of Charles F. Kettering”
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  • We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 102 quotes from the Inventor Charles Kettering, starting from August 29, 1876! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!