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
People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.
In America we can say what we think, and even if we can't think, we can say it anyhow.
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.
I think that the greatest education in the world is the education which helps one to be able to do the right things at the time it has to be done.
Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.
We have been measuring too much in terms of the dollar. What we should do is think in terms of useful materials-things that will be of value to us in our daily life.
You can't have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.
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 form 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.
We should all be concerned about the future because we will have to live the rest of our lives there.
The only difference between intelligence and education is this: intelligence will make you a good living
If a fellow wants to be a nobody in the business world, let him neglect sending the mail man to somebody on his behalf.
I bought him an attractive bird cage made in Switzerland,
It is the follow through that makes the great difference between ultimate successand failure, because it is so easy to stop.
It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.