Charles Kettering

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

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

Sourced

• The whole fun of living is trying to make something better.
  • As quoted in Dynamic Work Simplification (1971) by W. Clements Zinck, p. 12

• A problem thoroughly understood is always fairly simple. Found your opinions on facts, not prejudices. We know too many things that are not true.
  • As quoted in Dynamic Work Simplification (1971) by W. Clements Zinck, p. 122

• The key to economic prosperity is the organized creation of dissatisfaction.
  • As quoted in The End of Work (1995) by Jeremy Rifkin, p. 19

• 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.
  • As quoted in Scientific American (August 1934) p. 243

• 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.
  • As quoted in Boss Ket (1961) by Rosamond McPherson Young p. 194

• 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.
  • as quoted in Boss Ket (1961) by Rosamond McPherson Young p. 194

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• A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere with progressive things.

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

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

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

• 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.

• It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.

• My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
  • Variant: My interest is in the future, as I'm going to be spending the rest of my life there.

• Nothing ever built arose to touch the skies unless some man dreamed that it should, some man believed that it could, and some man willed that it must.

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

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

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

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

• A problem well stated is a problem half solved.

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

• You can be sincere and still be stupid.