famous last words

Famous 'Last Words'
"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.
Famous 'Last Words'
"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value." � Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de Guerre.

Famous 'Last Words'
"But what ... is it good for?" � Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division of IBM, 1968, commenting on the microchip.

Famous 'Last Words'
"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.

Famous 'Last Words'
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." � Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899.

Famous 'Last Words'
"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible." � Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895.

Famous 'Last Words'
"I have traveled the length and breadth of this country and talked with the best people, and I can assure you that data processing is a fad that won't last out the year." � The editor in charge of business books for Prentice Hall, 1957.

Famous 'Last Words'
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." � Thomas J Watson, Chairman of the Board, IBM.

Famous 'Last Words'
"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The literature was full of examples that said you can't do this." � Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads.

Famous 'Last Words'
"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." �

Famous 'Last Words'
"Man will never reach the moon regardless of all future scientific advances." � Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the vacuum tube and father of television.

Famous 'Last Words'
"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." � 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work.

Famous 'Last Words'
"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'" � Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer.

Famous 'Last Words'
"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau." � Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929.

Famous 'Last Words'
"The bomb will never go off. I speak as an expert in explosives." � Admiral William Leahy, US Atomic Bomb Project.

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

Famous 'Last Words'
"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.

Famous 'Last Words'
"There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in his home." � Ken Olson, President, Digital Equipment, 1977

Famous 'Last Words'
"This fellow Charles Lindbergh will never make it. He's doomed." � Harry Guggenheim, millionaire aviation enthusiast.

Famous 'Last Words'
"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.

Famous 'Last Words'
"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out." � Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

Famous 'Last Words'
"Where a calculator on the ENIAC is equipped with 18,000 vacuum tubes and weighs 30 tons, computers in the future may have only 1,000 vacuum tubes and perhaps weigh 1 1/2 tons." � Popular Mechanics, March 1949

Famous 'Last Words'
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" � H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927.

Famous 'Last Words'
"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle development across all of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of life. You just have to accept inconsistent muscle development as an unalterable condition of weight training." � Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the "unsolvable" problem by inventing Nautilus.