Charles Kettering Quotes

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

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

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

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.

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.

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.

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

here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.

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

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

99 percent of success is built on failure.

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.

One fails forward toward success.

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

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

My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.

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

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.

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.

There exist limitless opportunities in every industry. Where there is an open mind, there will always be a frontier.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

What I believe is that, by proper effort, we make the future almost anything we want to make 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).

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

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

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

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

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

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.

I expect to spend the rest of my life in the future, so I want to be reasonably sure of what kind of future it's going to be. That is my reason for planning.

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

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

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

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.

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

The price of progress is trouble.

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.

I've never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.

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

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.

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.

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