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Charles Kettering Quotes

1876–1958 United States

Charles Franklin Kettering (29 August 1876 - 24 or 25 November 1958) was an American inventor and social philosopher.

United States
Businesspeople
Philosophers

Also known as: Charles F. Kettering

Random Charles Kettering quote

10 quotes

A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.

Dynamic Work Simplification (1971)

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

The End of Work (1995)

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

The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.

Dynamic Work Simplification (1971)

Logic is a way of going wrong systematically.

We think we are smart because we have been flying for about sixty years. Birds and bees and butterflies have been flying for hundreds of thousands of years.

Boss Ket (1961)

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.

Boss Ket (1961)

We find that in research a certain amount of intelligent ignorance is essential to progress; for, if you know too much, you won't try the thing.

I am not worried about the future at all. I don't like to run it down. I don't like to think of it being too dark because I expect to spend all the rest of my life there and I don't want to have a nasty end to it.

You are always too late with a development if you are so slow that people demand it before you yourself recognize it. The research department should have foreseen what was necessary and had it ready to a point where people never knew they wanted it until it was made available to them.

Attribution

Quotes and notes from Wikiquote: Charles Kettering (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0.