TODAY IN SCIENCE HISTORY ®  •  TODAYINSCI ®
Celebrating 24 Years on the Web
Find science on or your birthday

Today in Science History - Quickie Quiz
Who said: “Genius is two percent inspiration, ninety-eight percent perspiration.”
more quiz questions >>
Home > Dictionary of Science Quotations > Scientist Names Index L > William P. Lear Quotes

Thumbnail of William P. Lear (source)
William P. Lear
(26 Jun 1902 - 14 May 1978)

American aeronautical engineer, electrical engineer and inventor who founded the Lear Jet Corporation supplying corporate jet aircraft. His many other inventions included patents for the car radio, eight-tape player and aircraft navigation equipment.


Science Quotes by William P. Lear (8 quotes)

William Lear, seated behind office desk, showing turbine engine - colorization © todayinsci.com - original b/w public domain
William Lear, showing a turbine engine.
colorization © todayinsci (Terms of Use) (source)

Please respect the colorization artist’s wishes and do not copy this image for ONLINE use anywhere else.

Thank you.

For offline use, click Terms of Use tab on top menu.


Always deal from strength, never from weakness.
— William P. Lear
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001 ), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116
Science quotes on:  |  Deal (192)  |  Dealing (11)  |  Never (1089)  |  Strength (139)  |  Weakness (50)

Don't take a nibble, take a big bite.
— William P. Lear
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001 ), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116
Science quotes on:  |  Big (55)  |  Bite (18)  |  Nibble (2)

Have fun: You only go through life once, but if you play it right once is enough.
— William P. Lear
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001 ), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116
Science quotes on:  |  Enough (341)  |  Fun (42)  |  Life (1870)  |  Play (116)  |  Right (473)  |  Through (846)

I remember working out a blueprint for my future when I was twelve years old I resolved first to make enough money so I'd never be stopped from finishing anything; second, that to accumulate money in a hurry—and I was in a hurry—I'd have to invent something that people wanted. And third, that if I ever was going to stand on my own feet, I'd have to leave home.
— William P. Lear
In Sidney Shalett, 'Aviation’s Stormy Genius', Saturday Evening Post (13 Oct 1956), 229, No. 15, 26 & 155
Science quotes on:  |  Accumulate (30)  |  Blueprint (9)  |  Enough (341)  |  Finish (62)  |  First (1302)  |  Future (467)  |  Home (184)  |  Hurry (16)  |  Invention (400)  |  Money (178)  |  Never (1089)  |  Old (499)  |  People (1031)  |  Remember (189)  |  Something (718)  |  Stand (284)  |  Stop (89)  |  Want (504)  |  Year (963)

Strive for design simplicity. You never have to fix anything you leave out.
— William P. Lear
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116.
Science quotes on:  |  Design (203)  |  Fix (34)  |  Leave (138)  |  Never (1089)  |  Simplicity (175)  |  Striving (3)

Tape playback in automobiles is going to be the next big thing. I’m going to be in the position of a man with a boat full of life jackets following a ship he knows is going to sink. He won’t have any trouble selling them.
— William P. Lear
About making 100,000 new eight-track tape units before having any orders for them. As quoted by C.P. Gilmore, 'Hard-Nosed Gambler in the Plane Game', (1966). Collected in Max Gunther, The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way: The Spectacular Success (1972, 2010) 182.
Science quotes on:  |  Automobile (23)  |  Know (1538)  |  Life (1870)  |  Man (2252)  |  Next (238)  |  Sale (3)  |  Selling (6)  |  Ship (69)  |  Sink (38)  |  Sinking (6)  |  Thing (1914)  |  Trouble (117)

They said I’d never build it, that if I built it, it wouldn’t fly; that if it flew, I couldn’t sell it. Well, I did, and it did, and I could.
— William P. Lear
About critics of his Learjet airplane announced in 1963. As quoted by C.P. Gilmore, 'Hard-Nosed Gambler in the Plane Game', (1966). Collected in Max Gunther, The Very, Very Rich and How They Got That Way: The Spectacular Success (1972, 2010) 170.
Science quotes on:  |  Airplane (43)  |  Build (211)  |  Fly (153)  |  Jet (4)  |  Never (1089)  |  Sell (15)

Too soon is just right.
— William P. Lear
In J.S. "Torch" Lewis, 'Lear the Legend', Aviation Week & Space Technology (2 Jul 2001 ), 155 Supplement, No 1, 116
Science quotes on:  |  Right (473)  |  Soon (187)


See also:
  • 26 Jun - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Lear's birth.
  • William P. Lear - biography on the founder of the Learjet company.

Carl Sagan Thumbnail 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) -- Carl Sagan
Quotations by:Albert EinsteinIsaac NewtonLord KelvinCharles DarwinSrinivasa RamanujanCarl SaganFlorence NightingaleThomas EdisonAristotleMarie CurieBenjamin FranklinWinston ChurchillGalileo GalileiSigmund FreudRobert BunsenLouis PasteurTheodore RooseveltAbraham LincolnRonald ReaganLeonardo DaVinciMichio KakuKarl PopperJohann GoetheRobert OppenheimerCharles Kettering  ... (more people)

Quotations about:Atomic  BombBiologyChemistryDeforestationEngineeringAnatomyAstronomyBacteriaBiochemistryBotanyConservationDinosaurEnvironmentFractalGeneticsGeologyHistory of ScienceInventionJupiterKnowledgeLoveMathematicsMeasurementMedicineNatural ResourceOrganic ChemistryPhysicsPhysicianQuantum TheoryResearchScience and ArtTeacherTechnologyUniverseVolcanoVirusWind PowerWomen ScientistsX-RaysYouthZoology  ... (more topics)
Sitewide search within all Today In Science History pages:
Visit our Science and Scientist Quotations index for more Science Quotes from archaeologists, biologists, chemists, geologists, inventors and inventions, mathematicians, physicists, pioneers in medicine, science events and technology.

Names index: | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |

Categories index: | 1 | 2 | A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z |
Thank you for sharing.
- 100 -
Sophie Germain
Gertrude Elion
Ernest Rutherford
James Chadwick
Marcel Proust
William Harvey
Johann Goethe
John Keynes
Carl Gauss
Paul Feyerabend
- 90 -
Antoine Lavoisier
Lise Meitner
Charles Babbage
Ibn Khaldun
Euclid
Ralph Emerson
Robert Bunsen
Frederick Banting
Andre Ampere
Winston Churchill
- 80 -
John Locke
Bronislaw Malinowski
Bible
Thomas Huxley
Alessandro Volta
Erwin Schrodinger
Wilhelm Roentgen
Louis Pasteur
Bertrand Russell
Jean Lamarck
- 70 -
Samuel Morse
John Wheeler
Nicolaus Copernicus
Robert Fulton
Pierre Laplace
Humphry Davy
Thomas Edison
Lord Kelvin
Theodore Roosevelt
Carolus Linnaeus
- 60 -
Francis Galton
Linus Pauling
Immanuel Kant
Martin Fischer
Robert Boyle
Karl Popper
Paul Dirac
Avicenna
James Watson
William Shakespeare
- 50 -
Stephen Hawking
Niels Bohr
Nikola Tesla
Rachel Carson
Max Planck
Henry Adams
Richard Dawkins
Werner Heisenberg
Alfred Wegener
John Dalton
- 40 -
Pierre Fermat
Edward Wilson
Johannes Kepler
Gustave Eiffel
Giordano Bruno
JJ Thomson
Thomas Kuhn
Leonardo DaVinci
Archimedes
David Hume
- 30 -
Andreas Vesalius
Rudolf Virchow
Richard Feynman
James Hutton
Alexander Fleming
Emile Durkheim
Benjamin Franklin
Robert Oppenheimer
Robert Hooke
Charles Kettering
- 20 -
Carl Sagan
James Maxwell
Marie Curie
Rene Descartes
Francis Crick
Hippocrates
Michael Faraday
Srinivasa Ramanujan
Francis Bacon
Galileo Galilei
- 10 -
Aristotle
John Watson
Rosalind Franklin
Michio Kaku
Isaac Asimov
Charles Darwin
Sigmund Freud
Albert Einstein
Florence Nightingale
Isaac Newton


by Ian Ellis
who invites your feedback
Thank you for sharing.
Today in Science History
Sign up for Newsletter
with quiz, quotes and more.