1876-1958, American Engineer, Inventor
A person must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
Charles F. Kettering – [Common Sense]
An inventor is simply a person who doesn't take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates form college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he's in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that 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 F. Kettering – [Invention and Inventor]
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
Charles F. Kettering – [Failure]
Failures are finger posts on the road to achievement.
Charles F. Kettering – [Achievement]
If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.
Charles F. Kettering – [Business]
If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.
Charles F. Kettering – [Wrong]
If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.
Charles F. Kettering – [Ideas]
In America we can say what we think, and even if we can't think, we can say it anyhow.
Charles F. Kettering – [Thoughts and Thinking]
It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
Charles F. Kettering – [Prejudice]
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 F. Kettering – [Action]
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Charles F. Kettering – [Future]
Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.
Charles F. Kettering – [Imagination]
People are very open-minded about new things. As long as they are exactly like the old ones.
Charles F. Kettering – [Tolerance]
Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.
Charles F. Kettering – [Problems]
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 F. Kettering – [Blood]
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 F. Kettering – [Imagination]
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
Charles F. Kettering – [Change]
There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
Charles F. Kettering – [Understanding]
There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.
Charles F. Kettering – [Opportunity]
Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.
Charles F. Kettering – [Thoughts and Thinking]