Quotes By 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.

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

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

One fails forward toward success.

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

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

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

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

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

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

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

We often say that the biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee to fail intelligently... to experiment over and over again and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

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

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.

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.

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

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

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

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

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

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

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.