Quotes By Charles Kettering

If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

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.

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

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.

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

There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.

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.

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.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

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

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.

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.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend 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.

The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.

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.

We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

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

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.

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

A problem well stated is a problem half-solved.

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.

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

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

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