Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?
      H.M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927

I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face and not Gary Cooper.
      Garry Cooper on his decision not to take the leading role in Gone With The Wind

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. Field's Cookies

We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out.
      Decca Recording Company, rejecting the Beatles, 1962

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
      Lord Kelvin, President, Royal Society, 1895

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

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 thing 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. found Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and HP interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer

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.
      New York Times editorial about Robert Goddard's revolutionary rocket work, 1921

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 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

Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground and try and find oil? You're crazy.
      Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859

Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.
      Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale University, 1929

Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value.
      Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure du Guerre

Everything that can be invented has been invented.
      Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899

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 intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.
      Sir John Eric Ericksen, British Surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873

Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons.
      Popular Mechanics, 1949

I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.
      Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

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

But what... is it good for?
      Engineer at the Advanced Computing Division of IBM, commenting on the microchip, 1968

There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home.
      Ken Olson, President, Chairman, and founder of Digital Equipment Corporation, 1977

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 1920's

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 Corporation.

When the Paris Exhibition closes, electric light will close with it and no more will be heard of it.
      Erasmus Wilson, professor at Oxford University, 1878

Well-informed people know it is impossible to transmit the voice over wires and that were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.
      Editorial in the Boston Post, 1865

You could put in this room, DeForest, all the radiotelephone apparatus that the country will ever need.
      W. W. Dean, president of the Dean Telephone Company, to Lee DeForest, the American radio pioneer, 1907

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.
      Lee DeForest, quoted in the New York Times, 1926

[Man will never reach the moon] regardless of all future scientific advances.
      Lee DeForest, inventor of the audion tube, New York Times, 1957

I am tired of this thing called science.... We have spent millions in that sort of thing for the last few years, and it is time it should be stopped.
      Simon Cameron, U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, demanding that funding end for the Smithsonian Institution, 1861

The ordinary "horseless carriage" is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle.
      The Literary Digest, 1899

That the automobile has practically reached the liimit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the past year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced.
      Scientific American, 1909

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
      Lord Kelvin, British mathematician, physicist, and president of the British Royal Society, circa 1895

The French people are incapable of regicide
      King Louis XVI of France, circa 1789. He was convicted of treason and beheaded in 1793.

Who'd pay to see a drawing of a fairy princess when they can watch Joan Crawford's boobs for the same price at the box office?
      Louis B. Mayer referring to Snow White

The cinema is little more than a fad. It's canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.
      Charlie Chaplin, circa 1916

We do not believe in the permanence of his reputation.
      The Saturday Review, London, on Charles Dickens, 1858

I'm sorry, Mr. Kipling, but you just don't know how to use the English Language.
      Editor of the San Francisco Examiner, informing Rudyard Kipling (who had one article published) that he shouldn't submit a second article for publishing, 1889

Gauguin is... a decorator tainted with insanity.
      Kenyon Cox, American painter and art critic, Harper's Weekly, 1913

He couldn't hit an inside pitch to save his neck. If he were a white man I doubt they would even consider him as big league material.
      Bob Feller, Cleveland Indians pitcher, on the announcement that the Doders had signed Jackie Robinson, 1945

It's too far to commute. And how can you make a business out of a search engine?
      Guy Kawasaki, when asked if he would be interested in interviewing for the CEO position at Yahoo! when the company was starting

640K ought to be enough for anybody.
      Bill Gates, 1981

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