QuoteProject
Inventing is a combination of brains and materials. The more brains you use, the less material you need.
Charles Kettering
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Inventing involves creativity and resourcefulness; using intelligence can reduce the necessity for physical materials.

In this quote, Charles Kettering emphasizes the important relationship between intellect and innovation. He suggests that the more we rely on our cognitive abilities—the 'brains' we utilize—the less we need to depend on physical inputs or materials to create something new. This highlights the power of ideas and creativity in the invention process, implying that innovative thinking is often more valuable than the resources at hand.

Themes

InventingCreativityInnovationIntelligenceResourcefulness

In practice

Example use cases

In a speech about innovation at a tech conference.

More from Charles Kettering

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.
Charles KetteringRead
It is the 'follow through' that makes the great difference between ultimate success and failure, because it is so easy to stop.
Charles KetteringRead
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 someone reaching for his slide rule. Then he'd be on his feet saying, "Boss, you can't do it."
Charles KetteringRead
A research problem is not solved by apparatus; it is solved in a man's head.
Charles KetteringRead
My interest is in the future because I am going to spend the rest of my life there.
Charles KetteringRead
I often say that research is a way of finding out what you are going to do when you can't keep on doing what you are doing now.
Charles KetteringRead

Similar quotes

Your filter bubble is your own personal, unique universe of information that you live in online. What's in your filter bubble depends on who you are, and it depends on what you do. But you don't decide what gets in - and more importantly, you don't see what gets edited out.
Eli PariserRead
I said the screen will kill the reader, and it has: the movie screen in the beginning, the television screen, and now the coup de grace, the computer screen.
Philip RothRead
Holding back technology to reserve business models is like allowing blacksmiths to veto the internal combustion engine in order to protect their horseshoes.
Don TapscottRead
Remove advertising, disable a person or firm from proclaiming its wares and their merits, and the whole of society and of the economy is transformed. The enemies of advertising are the enemies of freedom.
David OgilvyRead
A lot of movies about artificial intelligence envision that AI's will be very intelligent but missing some key emotional qualities of humans and therefore turn out to be very dangerous.
Ray KurzweilRead
The Open Source theorem says that if you give away source code, innovation will occur. Certainly, Unix was done this way... However, the corollary states that the innovation will occur elsewhere. No matter how many people you hire. So the only way to get close to the state of the art is to give the people who are going to be doing the innovative things the means to do it. That's why we had built-in source code with Unix. Open source is tapping the energy that's out there.
Bill JoyRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.