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Charles F. Kettering
(29 Aug 1876 - 25 Nov 1958)
American engineer whose 140 patents included the electric starter, car lighting and ignition systems.
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Charles F. Kettering Quotes on Achievement (10 quotes)
>> Click for 67 Science Quotes by Charles F. Kettering
>> Click for Charles F. Kettering Quotes on | Failure | Future | Idea | Inventor | Problem | Progress | Research | Success |
>> Click for 67 Science Quotes by Charles F. Kettering
>> Click for Charles F. Kettering Quotes on | Failure | Future | Idea | Inventor | Problem | Progress | Research | Success |
Every great improvement has come after repeated failures. Virtually nothing comes out right the first time. Failures, repeated failures, are finger posts on the road to achievement. One fails forward toward success.
— Charles F. Kettering
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
— Charles F. Kettering
It's amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
— Charles F. Kettering
My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.
— Charles F. Kettering
No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
— Charles F. Kettering
Quoted in 'Looking ahead with Boss Ket', Popular Mechanics (Feb 1935), 63, No. 2, 202.
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.
— Charles F. Kettering
The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.
— Charles F. Kettering
There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.
— Charles F. Kettering
When I was research head of General Motors and wanted a problem solved, I’d place a table outside the meeting room with a sign: “Leave slide rules here.” If I didn’t do that, I'd find someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss, you can’t do it.”
— Charles F. Kettering
In Jacob Morton Braude, Speaker's Desk Book of Quips, Quotes, & Anecdotes (1966), 323.
Whenever you look at a piece of work and you think the fellow was crazy, then you want to pay some attention to that. One of you is likely to be, and you had better find out which one it is. It makes an awful lot of difference.
— Charles F. Kettering
See also:
- 29 Aug - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Kettering's birth.
- Short Stories of Science and Invention - Index to A Collection of Radio Talks by Charles F. Kettering
- Charles Franklin Kettering: A Biography, by T. A. Boyd. - book suggestion.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
