Charles Kettering Quotes

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

A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

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.

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

You can't have a better tomorrow if you're thinking about yesterday.

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.

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

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

Logic is an organized way to go wrong with confidence.

Keep on going and the chances are that you will stumble onto something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling onto something sitting down.

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

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

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

Logic is an organized way to go wrong with confidence. We should all know by now that a logical course is not always the right one.

Kaiken merkittävän, radikaalin kehityksen täytyy tapahtua sääntöjen tuolla puolen, rakenteet kyseenalaistaen, muuten mitään aidosti uutta ei synny.

My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.

I have found from costly experience that it is much easier to analyze the facts after writing them down. In fact, merely writing the facts on a piece of paper and stating our problem clearly goes a long way toward helping us reach a sensible decision. As Charles Kettering puts it: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

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

A problem well defined is a problem half-solved.

Every father should remember one day his child will follow his example, not his advice

The only time you can't afford to fail is the last time you try.

We know too many things that are not true.

One fails forward toward success.

If you hang birdcages in your mind, you eventually get something to put in them.

If Charles F. Kettering or Thomas Alva Edison or Henry Ford had been put to work digging ditches under duress, one could calculate approximately how much energy or work could have been got out of them. Left to their own devices, as they were, it is impossible to say how much energy they actually released into production.

High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation. —CHARLES F. KETTERING, INVENTOR OF THE ELECTRICAL STARTER

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

If an experiment fails, then you ought to be careful to find out just why it failed, because the failure may not have had anything to do with the reasonableness of the principle.” 

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail. Charles Kettering

fe y actúe como si fuera imposible fracasar. CHARLES F. KETTERING

People are very open-minded about new things - as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.” -Charles F. Kettering

A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.1 —CHARLES KETTERING, AMERICAN ENGINEER, HOLDER OF 186 PATENTS, INVENTOR OF THE ELECTRICAL STARTING MOTOR, LEADED GASOLINE, AND FREON REFRIGERANT

two things killed that first generation of electric cars. One was Henry Ford’s Model T and the mass production of the assembly line. The other, though less well known, was the electric starter, invented by Charles Kettering in 1911 for Cadillac after a person died from cranking a car. Kettering’s invention eliminated the need for someone to stand in front and crank. Over the next several years, electric cars faded away.

As Charles Kettering puts it: “A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

Inventor Charles F. Kettering said, “There is a great deal of difference between knowing and understanding. You can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

just seven years later Henry Ford began to sell his Model T, the first mass-produced affordable and durable passenger car, and in 1911 Charles Kettering, who later played a key role in developing leaded gasoline, designed the first practical electric starter, which obviated dangerous hand cranking (fig. 2.2). And although hard-topped roads were still in short supply even in the eastern part of the US, their construction began to accelerate, with the country’s paved highway length more than doubling between 1905 and 1920. No less important, decades of crude oil discoveries accompanied by advances in refining provided the liquid fuels needed for the expansion of the new transportation, and in 1913 Standard Oil of Indiana introduced William Burton’s thermal cracking of crude oil, the process that increased gasoline yield while reducing the share of volatile compounds that make up the bulk of natural gasolines.

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.

Innovator Charles Kettering, the longtime head of research at General Motors and a prolific inventor, had warned his industry colleagues about getting caught in this trap. “An inventor is simply a fellow who doesn’t take his education too seriously,” he said. In other words, inventors are engineers who can let go of their expertness and achieve what Apple’s late CEO, Steve Jobs, called the “lightness of being a beginner again.

Keep on going, and the chances are that you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I never heard of anyone ever stumbling on something sitting down. —Charles F. Kettering businessman

A problem well stated is a problem half solved. —Charles Kettering (1876–1958), American inventor, holder of 300 patents, including electrical ignition for automobiles There is no greater impediment to the advancement of knowledge than the ambiguity of words. —Thomas Reid (1710–1769), Scottish philosopher

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