Charles Kettering
Charles Kettering
Charles Franklin Ketteringwas an American inventor, engineer, businessman, and the holder of 186 patents. He was a founder of Delco, and was head of research at General Motors from 1920 to 1947. Among his most widely used automotive developments were the electrical starting motor and leaded gasoline. In association with the DuPont Chemical Company, he was also responsible for the invention of Freon refrigerant for refrigeration and air conditioning systems. At DuPont he also was responsible for the development of...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEntrepreneur
Date of Birth29 August 1876
CityLoudonville, OH
CountryUnited States of America
Charles Kettering quotes about
You are always too late with a development if you are so slow that people demand it before you yourself recognize it. The research department should have foreseen what was necessary and had it ready to a point where people never knew they wanted it until it was made available to them.
The opportunities of man are limited only by his imagination. But so few have imagination that there are ten thousand fiddlers to one composer.
It is easy to build a philosophy - it doesn't have to run
Research is an organized method for keeping you reasonably dissatisfied with what you have.
In many ways ideas are more important than people - they are much more permanent.
We have reason not to be afraid of the machine, for there is always constructive change, the enemy of machines, making them change to fit new conditions.
There has never been any 30-hour week for men who had anything to do.
One of the things we have to be thankful for is that we don't get as much government as we pay for.
People see the wrongness in an idea much quicker that the rightness.
Logic is a system whereby one may go wrong with confidence.
And there is the point exactly, we are all the time blaming difficulties on to something else. Our real trouble is that we are too soft to solve the problem.
Modern psychology teaches that experience is not merely the best teacher, but the only possible teacher.. There is no war between theory and practice. The most valuable experience demands both, and the theory should supplement the practice and not precede it.
Every honest researcher I know admits he's just a professional amateur. He's doing whatever he's doing for the first time. That makes him an amateur. He has sense enough to know that he's going to have a lot of trouble, so that makes him a professional.
I don't want men of experience working for me. The experienced man is always telling me why something can't be done. The fellow who has not had any experience is so dumb he doesn't know a thing can't be done - and he goes ahead and does it.