Charles F. Kettering Quotes

• Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Belief

  Tags in Hope

• You can send a message around the world in one fifth of a second, yet it may take years for it to get from the outside of a man’s head to the inside.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Growth

• We should all be concerned with the future because we will have to spend the rest of our lives there.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Future
• 

  You can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Time, Nostalgia
• 

  High achievement always takes place in the framework of high expectation.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Achievement, Expectations

  Tags in Always, Framework, High, Takes, Place

• A man must have a certain amount of intelligent ignorance to get anywhere.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Men

• 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 in Failure

  Tags in Motivation
• 

  Every father should remember that one day his son will follow his example instead of his advice.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Advice, Father

  Tags in Remember

• We have a lot of people revolutionizing the world because they’ve never had to present a working model.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Revolution, World, Mankind

• Our imagination is the only limit to what we can hope to have in the future.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Imagination

• If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Politics, Work

  Tags in Ideas

• Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Taxation, Thinking

• People think of the inventor as a screwball, but no one ever asks the inventor what he thinks of other people.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Thinking

• The only difference between a problem and a solution is that people understand the solution.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Solution

• It is easy to build a philosophy – it doesn’t have to run.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Philosophy

• 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 in Knowledge

  Tags in Understanding

• 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 in Future

  Tags in Peace, Faith

• 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.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Education

  Tags in Tolerance

• People are very open-minded about new things – as long as they’re exactly like the old ones.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People

• If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.

  Charles F. Kettering

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Change/Growth, Habit

Charles F. Kettering (43)

Birth:	29th August, 1876
Death:	25th November, 1958
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Businessman, Electrical Engineer, Inventor

About

Charles Franklin Kettering was born in Loudonville, Ohio. He was an American businessman, Electrical Engineer and Inventor. 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. He led the advancement of practical, lightweight two-stroke diesel engines, revolutionizing the locomotive and heavy equipment industries. In 1927, he founded the Kettering Foundation, a non-partisan research foundation. He graduated from OSU in 1904 with an electrical engineering degree.

Related Authors

• Curtis Carlson
• Harold S. Geneen
• Michael Heseltine
• Peter Nivio Zarlenga
• Richard Grasso
• Arthur Blank
• W. Averell Harriman
• Darell Hammond
• Ron Johnson

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 27th November

Births

• 1942 - Marilyn Hacker
• 1927 - William E. Simon
• 1964 - Robin Givens
• 1907 - L. Sprague de Camp

Deaths

• 1878 - Samuel H Hammond
• 2011 - Ken Russell
• 1922 - Alice Meynell
• 1953 - Eugene O'Neill