James Dyson
Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.
If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house remortgaged, huge emotional investment and financial investment.
The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.
My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything.
I hate science fiction.
I imported the first Mac into England in 1984; you know, the beige box. I imported what I think were the first four that came into England. I never opened the instruction manual. That was the best thing about it.
We need to encourage investors to invest in high-technology startups.
The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.
Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.
Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.
As a modern employer you have to treat people well.
Insurance companies don't make anything.
I'm not a businessman.
The computer dictates how you do something, whereas with a pencil you're totally free.
You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.
Beauty can come in strange forms.
I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.
I want entrepreneurs to be engineers and scientists and designers; they don't necessarily have to be Internet entrepreneurs or retail entrepreneurs.
We should have A-levels in vocational subjects.
Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.
Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.
We have to change our culture so you can create wealth from making things and don't just try to make money out of money.
It is an extreme perversion of capitalism if you can trade in something before you have even paid for it.
Emerging markets are hugely important.
What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.
If you want to do something different, you're going to come up against a lot of naysayers.
Business is constantly changing, constantly evolving.
When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies, people think they aren't important.
In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.
Engineering undergraduates should not be charged fees. They should receive grants, not student loans, and the government will get the money back long-term from increased exports.
I don't do something necessarily to make a big profit or because it's a logical business decision.
I myself scraped seven poor passes at O-level.
Children want the challenge of difficult tasks - just look how much better they are than their parents on a computer.
The U.S. is the biggest investor in research and development in the world. It has the best universities. Keeping them supplied with the best talent is essential.
China has all the advantages in the world. But it doesn't have a history of free thinking, risk-taking pioneers - the kind of people the U.S. is built upon.
Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.
When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.
Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.
I own every share of my company, and I don't want to sell any of it.
I've fought court battles over my inventions before.
China can and will be an invaluable trading partner to both the U.S. and the U.K.
Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.
I made 5,127 prototypes of my vaccum before I got it right. There were 5,126 failures. But I learned from each one. That’s how I came up with a solution. So I don’t mind failure.Collection: Mind
Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.Collection: Magic
Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.Collection: Mistake
What I've learned from running is that the time to push hard is when you're hurting like crazy and you want to give up. Success is often just around the corner.Collection: Inspirational
Success is made of 99% failure.Collection: Made
Some of the best inventive moments are born out of 'wrong thinking'. Most people start with the right way so they all follow the same path. The wrong way will lead to mistakes from which you can learn and create new discoveries-the kind of original ideas that come to life when we dare to be different, keep an open mind, and have no fear of failure.Collection: Mistake
Everyone gets knocked back, no one rises smoothly to the top without hindrance. The ones who succeed are those who say, right, let’s give it another go.Collection: Giving