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All a trick." "A Mere Mountebank." "Absolute swindler." "Doesn't know
what he's about." "What's the good of it?" "What useful purpose will it
serve?" - Members of Britain's Royal Society, 1926, after a demonstration
of television.
"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity;
an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty." - Sir Winston Churchill (1874-1965)
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy." - Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his
project to drill for oil in 1859.
"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 imaginable 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 1920s.
"Such startling announcements as these should be deprecated as being
unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress" - Sir
William Siemens, 1880, on Edison's announcement of a successful light bulb."
"All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second, it is violently opposed.
Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." - Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)
Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo."- H. G. Wells (1866-1946)
When you do the common things in life in an uncommon way, you will command the attention of the world."
- George Washington Carver (1864-1943)
“Those that say wind technology will not dot the landscape like farm silos across the Midwest, are ‘tilting at windmills’” -David J. Gonzalez quoting famous line in Don Quixote’s book, Man of LaMancha
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be
obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at
will." -- Albert Einstein, 1932
"..so many centuries after the Creation it is unlikely that anyone could
find hitherto unknown lands of any value." - committee advising Ferdinand
and Isabella regarding Columbus' proposal, 1486
"I would sooner believe that two Yankee professors lied, than that stones
fell from the sky" - Thomas Jefferson, 1807 on hearing an eyewitness
report of falling meteorites.
"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous fiction." - Pierre
Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse, 1872
"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon." - Sir John Eric Ericksen,
British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria
1873.
640K ought to be enough for anybody." - Bill Gates, 1981
"Fooling around with alternating current is just a waste of time. Nobody
will use it, ever." - Thomas Edison, 1889
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense,
reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use."
- Galileo Galilei (1564-1642)
"There is more stupidity than hydrogen in the universe and it has a longer shelf life."
- Frank Zappa
"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy." -Simon Newcomb, astronomer, 1888
"The more important fundamental laws and facts of physical science have
all been discovered, and these are now so firmly established that the
possibility of their ever being supplanted in consequence of new
discoveries is exceedingly remote.... Our future discoveries must be
looked for in the sixth place of decimals." - physicist Albert. A.
Michelson, 1894
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." - Lord Kelvin,
president, Royal Society, 1895.
"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be
used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio
service inside the United States." -T. Craven, FCC Commissioner, 1961
"It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two
or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying
machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere."
- Thomas Edison, 1895
"Do, or do not. There is no 'try'."
- Yoda ('The Empire Strikes Back')
sources: http://www.skeptically.org/thinkersonreligion/id14.html - http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/quotes.html
"The United States possesses an energy bonanza, yet no dictator, sheik, or oil mogul controls its wells and spigots-or charges by the barrel or ton for wind. America has hundreds of billions of dollars worth of this free, nondepletable resource. We are the Saudi Arabia of wind."
John J. Berger author of "Charging Ahead; The Business of Renewable Energy and What It Means for America"
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