Quotes from Charles Kettering

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

here is a great difference between knowing a thing and understanding it. You can know a lot and not really understand anything.

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

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

Knowing is not understanding. There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

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

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

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

It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

We need to teach the highly educated man that it is not a disgrace to fail and that he must analyze every failure to find its cause. He must learn how to fail intelligently, for failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.

There has never been any 30-hour week for men who had anything to do.

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.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

If you're doing something the same way you have been doing it for ten years, the chances are you are doing it wrong.

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