Charles Kettering Quotes

46 Sourced Quotes

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

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

Charles Kettering
So that we might kill one another more expertly, science found wonderful ways to live more comfortably, richly, to communicate more rapidly. So that we might exterminate one another more successfully, science showed us how we might all live longer and stronger...

Charles Kettering
The difference between intelligence and an education is this-that intelligence will make you a good living.

Charles Kettering
I often say that research is a way of finding out what you are going to do when you can't keep on doing what you are doing now.

Charles Kettering
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.

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

Charles Kettering
I have no objection to the standardizing of bolts and nuts and screws... but I do have a terrible obsession against the standardization of ideas.

Charles Kettering
We should never over-estimate our own accomplishments because it is more than possible that new facts obtained from studies of nature can modify and improve many of our own well-established theories.

Charles Kettering
And there is the point exactly, we are all the time blaming difficulties on to something else. Our real trouble is that we are too soft to solve the problem.

Charles Kettering
No one should pick a problem, or make a resolution, unless he realizes that the ultimate value of it will offset the inevitable discomfort and trouble that always goes along with the accomplishment of anything worth while. So let us not waste our time and effort on some trivial thing.

Charles Kettering
But in picking that problem be sure to analyze it carefully to see that it is worth the effort. It takes just as much effort to solve a useless problem as a useful one.

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

Charles Kettering
We have only begun to knock a few chips from the great quarry of knowledge that has been given us to dig out and use. We know almost nothing about everything. That is why, with all conviction, I say that the future is boundless.

Charles Kettering
I often think we have so many facilities that we lose track of the problem. Problems, as you know, are solved in the mind of some intensely interested person.

Charles Kettering
The most highly satisfactory use of the reverse-curve sign of integration used in calculus is for those two S-openings in the top of a violin.

Charles Kettering
You must take the problem as it is, and let it be what it wants to be.

Charles Kettering
A problem is not solved in a laboratory. It is solved in some fellow's head. All the apparatus is for is to get his head turned around so that he can see the thing right.

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

Charles Kettering
As long as we try and patiently do our best to solve the problem, although we may not get the answer we are looking for, we always get something — even if it is only the valuable experience.

Charles Kettering
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.

Charles Kettering
The lack of ideas and inventions in one generation can easily mean the loss of Freedom in the next.

Charles Kettering
Developmental work is always a slightly organized chaos.

Charles Kettering
Some technical reports are so dry and dusty... that if you put a pile of them in a hydraulic press and apply millions of pounds of pressure to it, not a drop of juice will run out.

Charles Kettering
In many ways ideas are more important than people - they are much more permanent.

Charles Kettering
My interest is in the future because I'm going to spend the rest of my life there.

Charles Kettering
Learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

Charles Kettering
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.

Charles Kettering
Research is industrial prospecting. The oil prospectors use every scientific means to find new paying wells. Oil is found by each one of a number of methods. My own group of men are prospecting in a different field, using every possible scientific means. We believe there are still things left to be discovered. We have only stumbled upon a few barrels of physical laws from the great pool of knowledge. Some day we are going to hit a gusher.

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

Charles Kettering