Quotes from James Dyson

I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.

The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy.

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.

Success is made of 99% failure.

I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.

In the digital age of "overnight" success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

When you can't compete on cost, compete on quality.

Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward.

Well, air-conditioning is not a good thing.

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic.

Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.

The way the world is going, it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers, it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.

The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.

Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.

I'm afraid I am tidy, and I have to be because the office is open plan and my glass office door is literally always open.

After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology

At school, I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.

Reality TV is anything but.

There's nothing wrong with things taking time.

Emerging markets are hugely important.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.