“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

“I see no advantage in these new clocks. They run no faster than the ones made 100 years ago.”

“It is well enough that people of the nation do not understand our banking and monetary system, for if they did, I believe there would be a revolution before tomorrow morning.”

“I invented nothing new. I simply assembled the discoveries of other men behind whom were centuries of work. Had I worked fifty or ten or even five years before, I would have failed. So it is with every new thing. Progress happens when all the factors that make for it are ready, and then it is inevitable. To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.”

“I am looking for a lot of men who have and infinite capacity to not know what can’t be done.”

“Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”

“I cannot discover that anyone knows enough to say definitely what is and what is not possible.”