Charles Franklin Kettering (1876–1958) was an American automobile engineer. He was one of the leading inventors of his time.
Born in an Ohio farmhouse, Kettering founded Dayton Engineering Laboratories Company (DELCO,) which was sold to the General Motors Corporation (GM) in 1916. He became the head of research and later the vice president of GM.
During a long career as an inventor, Kettering was responsible for the development of the synchromesh gearbox, automatic transmission, power steering, electric self-starter, four-wheel brakes, and quick-drying paint for automobiles, among other devices. He also discovered the use of tetraethyl lead for an antiknock agent in petrol fuel.
Together with Alfred Sloan, Kettering founded the Sloan-Kettering Institute for Cancer Research (1945.) He also established the Flint Institute of Technology (1919) and General Motors Institute (1926,) now named Kettering University.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Charles F. Kettering
The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Problems, Problem-solving
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 some engineer reaching for his slide rule. Then he’d be on his feet saying, “Boss you can’t do that.”
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Perception
The world hates change, yet it is the only thing that has brought progress.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Change, Ideals
In America we can say what we think, and even if we can’t think, we can say it anyhow.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts
One of the things we have to be thankful for is that we don’t get as much government as we pay for.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Government
The price of progress is trouble.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Progress
Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Thinking, Thought, Thoughts
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.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: War, Success, Mistake, Failure, Mistakes, Learn, Fail, Great, Failures
Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Believe, Fail, Act, Belief, Failure
There has never been any 30-hour week for men who had anything to do.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Work
Industry prospers when it offers people articles which they want more than they want anything they now have. The fact is that people never buy what they need. They buy what they want.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Business
It’s amazing what ordinary people can do if they set out without preconceived notions.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Achieving, Prejudice
The difference between intelligence and an education is this-that intelligence will make you a good living.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Intelligence
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
Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Logic
The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Possibilities, Optimism, Positive Attitudes, Health, Determination
Don’t be afraid to stumble. Any inventor will tell you that you don’t follow a plan far before you strike a snag. If, out of 100 ideas you get one that works, it’s enough.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Ideas
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Imagination
People are very open-minded about new things—as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Change, Open-mindedness, Tolerance
If you want to kill any idea in the world today, get a committee working on it.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Ideas
No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Adversity, Risk
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
Topics: Progress
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
Topics: Mind
One fails forward toward success.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Failure, One liners
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.
—Charles F. Kettering
If you have always done it that way, it’s probably wrong.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Right, Rightness, Now, Change, Heart, Instincts, Secret
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
A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Common Sense, Men
A problem well stated is a problem half solved.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Problems, Identifying Problems
An inventor fails 999 times, and if he succeeds once, he’s in. He treats his failures simply as practice shots.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Failure
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.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Endurance, Challenges, Resolve, Perseverance, Trying, Action, Success & Failure
You can be sincere and still be stupid.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Ignorance
High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Expectation, Achieve, Success & Failure, Achievement, Work, Expectations
I could do nothing without problems, they toughen me my mind. In fact I tell my assistants not to bring me their successes for they weaken me; but rather to bring me their problems, for they strengthen me.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Strength, Mind
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
Topics: Future, Faith
Problems are the price of progress. Don’t bring me anything but trouble. Good news weakens me.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Challenges, Difficulties, Adversity, Problems
An inventor is simply a person who doesn’t take his education too seriously. You see, from the time a person is six years old until he graduates from college he has to take three or four examinations a year. If he flunks once, he is out. But an inventor is almost always failing. He tries and fails maybe a thousand times. It he succeeds once then he’s in. These two things are diametrically opposite. We often say that 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.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Failure, Creativity
There is a great difference between knowing and understanding: you can know a lot about something and not really understand it.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Understanding
The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.
—Charles F. Kettering
Topics: Perspective, Risk
You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
—Charles F. Kettering
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