Charles Kettering Quotes
21 quotes from Charles Kettering — Inventor and head of research at General Motors for 27 years..
“Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.”
“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.”
“The only time you mustn't fail is the last time you try.”
“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.”
“Problems are the price of progress. Don't bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.”
“The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.”
“An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he's in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.”
“A problem well stated is a problem half solved.”
“The difference between intelligence and an education is this—that intelligence will make you a good living.”
“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.”
“Progress has come about when an unusual man broke loose and independently on his own started something different. The usual man seldom makes inventions or strikes out new directions or blazes new trails or advances our frontiers of knowledge and understanding.”
“My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there.”
“We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.”
“I am not worried about the future at all. In fact I think it is the most wonderful future I ever had. I have got to spend all the rest of my life in that future, and I don't want to run it down.”
“A well-stated problem is half solved.”
“I am enthusiastic about being an American because I came from the hills in Ohio. I was a hillbilly. I didn't know at that time that I was an underprivileged person because I had to drive the cows through the frosty grass and stand in a nice warm spot where a cow had lain to warm my bare feet. I thought that was wonderful.”
“The significant thing is that while the unusual man may profit by his unusual efforts and sacrifice, in an infinitely greater measure does he contribute to the advancement of the whole. Indeed, that is the only way the whole can ever advance.”
