Charles Kettering's Quotes

My definition of an educated man is the fellow who knows the right thing to do at the time it has to be done. You can be sincere and still be stupid.

It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world.

No one would have crossed the ocean if he could have gotten off the ship in the storm.

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.

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

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.

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

It doesn't matter if you try and try and try again, and fail. It does matter if you try and fail, and fail to try again.

One fails forward toward success.

You can be sincere and still be stupid.

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.

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

The Wright brothers flew right through the smoke screen of impossibility.

There will always be a frontier where there is an open mind and a willing hand.

You will never stub your toe standing still. The faster you go, the more chance there is of stubbing your toe, but the more chance you have of getting somewhere.

Every time you tear a leaf off a calendar, you present a new place for new ideas and progress.

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

We have been travelling through a cloud. The sky has been dark ever since the war began.

Why don't you talk, and go straight, and let all be well?

I once thought that I was the only man that persevered to be the friend of the white man, but since they have come and cleaned out our lodges, horses, and everything else, it is hard for to believe the white man any more.

All we ask is that we have peace with the whites. We want to hold you by the hand. You are our father.

Although the troops have struck us, we throw it all behind and are glad to meet you in peace and friendship.

But we want peace, I would move all my people down this way. I could then keep them all quietly near camp.

We want to take good tidings home to our people, that they may sleep in peace.

We were once friends with the whites but you nudged us out of the way by your intrigues, and now when we are in council you keep nudging each other.

I want you to give all these chiefs of the soldiers here to understand that we are for peace, and that we have made peace, that we may not be mistaken by them for enemies.