Amazing Quotes

 

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
     ---Popular Science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
     ---Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"I have travelled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and
I can assure you that data processing is a fad and won't last out the year."
     ---Editor of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957

 
"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
     ---Ken Olsen, founder and president of Digital Equipment Corp, 1957

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of
communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
     ---Western Union internal memo, 1876

"The wireless music box has no commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to
nobody in particular?"
     ---David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in the radio in the
1920's

"The concept is interesting and well formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C' the idea
must be feasible."
     ---A Yale management professor in response to Fred Smith's paper proposing a reliable
overnight delivery service. (Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.)

"Who in the hell wants to hear actors talk?"
     ---H.M.Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

"I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper."
     ---Gary Cooper, on his decision not to take the leading role in 'Gone With The Wind'

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say America likes crispy
cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you make."
     ---Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."
     ---Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
     ---Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1895

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between action and reaction and the need to
have something better than a vacuum against which to react. He seems to lack the basic
knowledge ladled out daily in high schools."
     ---New York Times editorial about Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise
and humane suregon."
     ---Sir John Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon Extraordinary to Queen Victoria,
1873

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction."
     ---Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
     ---Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."
     ---Bill Gates, 1981