Dean Kamen quotes

Life is so short. Why waste a single day of it doing something that doesn't matter, that doesn't try to do something big? (Dean Kamen)
To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.
Dean Kamen
You have teenagers thinking they're going to make millions as NBA stars when that's not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.
Dean Kamen
My biggest worry is I'm running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time.
Dean Kamen
A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention.
Dean Kamen
Most of the time you will fail, but you will also occasionally succeed. Those occasional successes make all the hard work and sacrifice worthwhile.
Dean Kamen
An innovation is one of those things that society looks at and says, if we make this part of the way we live and work, it will change the way we live and work.
Dean Kamen
I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.
Dean Kamen
Everybody has to be able to participate in a future that they want to live for. That's what technology can do.
Dean Kamen
I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life.
Dean Kamen
The city needs a car like a fish needs a bicycle. (Dean Kamen)
More than ever, the world needs good engineers. However, the pool of talent is shrinking not growing.
Dean Kamen
If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.
Dean Kamen
If you're going to fail, you might as well fail at the big ones.
Dean Kamen
There is just so much stuff in the world that, to me, is devoid of any real substance, value, and content that I just try to make sure that I am working on things that matter.
Dean Kamen
People take the longest possible paths, digress to numerous dead ends, and make all kinds of mistakes. Then historians come along and write summaries of this messy, nonlinear process and make it appear like a simple, straight line.
Dean Kamen
My biggest failure is I have too many to talk about.
Dean Kamen
Some broad themes brought me where I am today. At a very young age, my hobby became thinking and finding connections.
Dean Kamen
I'm a human entropy producer.
Dean Kamen
You can make it out of Unobtainium!
Dean Kamen
I'd rather lose my own money than someone else's. (Dean Kamen)
I don't work on a project unless I believe that it will dramatically improve life for a bunch of people.
Dean Kamen
I don't want to think about how many people have thought or still think that I'm crazy.
Dean Kamen
As we move towards 8 or 10 billion people on the planet, there's a little less gold per capita. Each one of us will continue to be fighting over an ever smaller percentage of total resources. This is not a happy thought.
Dean Kamen
I consider high-speed data transmission an invention that became a major innovation. It changed the way we all communicate.
Dean Kamen