Every honest researcher I know admits he’s just a professional amateur. He’s doing whatever he’s doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he’s going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.

— Charles F. Kettering
Firsts

Charles F. Kettering Quotes

I object to people running down the future. I am going to live all the rest of my life there.

— Charles F. Kettering

We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions.

— Charles F. Kettering

I’ve never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down.

— Charles F. Kettering

If a fellow wants to be nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mailman to somebody on his behalf.

— Charles F. Kettering

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

— Charles F. Kettering

Great steps in human progress are made by things that don’t work the way philosophy thought they should. If things always worked the way they should, you could write the history of the world from now on. But they don’t, and it is those deviations from the normal that make human progress.

— Charles F. Kettering

If I have had any success, it’s due to luck, but I notice the harder I work, the luckier I get.

— Charles F. Kettering

The typical eye sees the ten per cent bad of an idea and overlooks the ninety per cent good.

— Charles F. Kettering

The future can be anything we want it to be, providing we have the faith and that we realize that peace, no less than war, required blood and sweat and tears.

— Charles F. Kettering

All human development, no matter what form it takes, must be outside the rules; otherwise we would never have anything new.

— Charles F. Kettering

We have been measuring too much in terms of the dollar. What we should do is think in terms of useful materials-things that will be of value to us in our daily life.

— Charles F. 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 F. 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 F. Kettering

Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.

— Charles F. Kettering

Learn how to fail intelligently.

— Charles F. Kettering

You can send a message around the world in one-fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man’s head to the inside.

— Charles F. Kettering

This problem, too, will look simple after it is solved.

— Charles F. Kettering

The simplest way to assure sales is to keep changing the product the market for new things is indefinitely elastic. One of the fundamental purposes of advertising, styling, and research is to foster a healthy dissatisfaction.

— Charles F. Kettering

Every honest researcher I know admits he’s just a professional amateur. He’s doing whatever he’s doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he’s going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.

— Charles F. Kettering
Firsts

Do not bring me your successes; they weaken me. Bring me your problems; they strengthen me.

— Charles F. Kettering
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