James Dyson Quotations

One of the most fun inventions of my lifetime is the Mini.

When I escaped to art school it was a Mini that took me there.

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You can never learn from success.

The Mini was cheap to run, economical to build and perfect for nipping about town.

The media thinks that you have to make science sexy and concentrate on themes such as rivalry and the human issues.

We need to encourage investors to invest in high-technology startups.

There's nothing wrong with things taking time.

If you really want to improve technology, if you want things to work better and be better, you've got to protect the person who spends a lot of effort, money, and time developing that new technology.

In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.

My interest in film is sort of catholic - apart from science fiction and horror movies, I'll watch almost everything.

Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.

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.

The way the world is going, it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers, it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.

The Web is fascinating and transformative, but it's an easy, flashy, get-rich-quick option to the hard graft of proper industry.

The one size fits all approach of standardized testing is convenient but lazy.

When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies, people think they aren't important.

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.

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.

I've obviously used fans - I wouldn't say all my life, because we couldn't afford them when I was young, but from my 20s and onwards we've had to use fans. And I've always loathed them. Everything about them. The way you adjust them, getting them at the angle you want. Carrying them. Cleaning them. The danger of putting your finger in them.

If you didn't have patents, no one would bother to spend money on research and development. But with patents, if someone has a good idea and a competitor can't copy it, then that competitor will have to think of their own way of doing it. So then, instead of just one innovator, you have two or three people trying to do something in a new way.

I think people are realizing that engineering and science are extremely good degrees to get and you'll be very highly paid once you've got them.

[In my home workshop,] generally I'm mending things, which is interesting because you learn a lot about why they broke.

Failure is so much more interesting because you learn from it. That's what we should be teaching children at school, that being successful the first time, there's nothing in it. There's no interest, you learn nothing actually.

As an engineer I'm constantly spotting problems and plotting how to solve them.

So I think the winners in recession are the people who produce new technology that does things better, which people really want.

Manufacturing is more than just putting parts together. It's coming up with ideas, testing principles and perfecting the engineering, as well as final assembly.

Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.

Emerging markets are hugely important.

Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.

Arbitrary benchmarks cheat kids out of a fulfilling education.

At school, I enjoyed playing the bassoon. I was in the orchestra and played the melody when the other boys sang hymns at prayers time.

Everybody recognizes that if you can make very efficient electric motors, you can make a quantum leap forward.

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.

I was frustrated as a child when I had to use a vacuum. It had a screaming noise and the smell of stale dog and a lack of performance.

I've fought court battles over my inventions before.

If robots are to clean our homes, they'll have to do it better than a person.

Reality TV is anything but.

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

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

Fear is always a good motivator.

Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.

Exactly 5,126 attempts to make the first bagless vacuum cleaner were failures-some catastrophic disappointments, some minor defects. It took 15 years. Prototype 5,127 was the success ... Failure is painful, but it spurs on improvement like nothing else.

Companies are not ingenious, it's the people in them that are.

Cordless vacuums are designed for quick jobs, but you need enough power to do the job; you don't want the power waning over time.

Design and technology should be the subject where mathematical brainboxes and science whizzkids turn their bright ideas into useful products.

Don't listen to experts.

Most robotic vacuum cleaners don't see their environment, have little suction, and don't clean properly. They are gimmicks. We've been developing a unique 360 vision system that lets our robot see where it is, where it has been, and where it is yet to clean. Vision, combined with our high speed digital motor and cyclone technology, is the key to achieving a high performing robot vacuum - a genuine labor saving device.

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.

Successes teach you nothing. Failures teach you everything. Making mistakes is the most important thing you can do.

There is no such thing as a quantum leap. There is only dogged persistence - and in the end you make it look like a quantum leap.

All our engineers are designers and all our designers are engineers.

Hire inexperience. This year we plan to hire 200 engineers - half of whom are recent grads. Young people are not burdened by years of experience. They haven't learned - or been told - what is right or wrong. With engineering, there is no tried and tested path. You try, and fail, and fix, and fail again.

The important thing is to learn from mistakes - something graduates are adept at. Our graduate engineers are working on new technology - from uncharted applications for our digital motor, to a new take on the hand dryer. With an unhindered mind, nothing is off limits.

Success is made of 99% failure.

Stumbling upon the next great invention in an 'ah-ha!' moment is a myth.

Anyone developing new products and new technology needs one characteristic above all else: hope.

Beauty can come in strange forms.

The key to success is failure… Success is made of 99 percent failure.

It's the unlikely juxtaposition of creativity and logic which causes the wooliness and confusion around the term 'innovation'. Everybody wants to be innovative; many companies and ideas are proclaimed to be innovative and no one doubts that innovation is a money spinner. And, thus, we are all looking for the magic formula. Well, here you go: Creativity + Iterative Development = Innovation.

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.

We’re taught to do things the right way. But if you want to discover something that other people haven’t, you need to do things the wrong way. Initiate a failure by doing something that’s very silly, unthinkable, naughty, dangerous. Watching why that fails can take you on a completely different path. It’s exciting, actually. To me, solving problems is a bit like a drug. You’re on it, and you can’t get off.

I learned that the moment you want to slow down is the moment you should accelerate.

Having a good idea is one thing, but persuading other people to buy it is quite another. Good inventors are polymaths: they think with their hands and their brains. They're experts in design, engineering and business.

I just think things should work properly

I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging the practical with the academic.

Anger is a good motivator.

Children want the challenge of difficult tasks - just look how much better they are than their parents on a computer.

As a modern employer you have to treat people well.

Engineers are behind the cars we drive, the pills we pop and the way we power our homes.

China can and will be an invaluable trading partner to both the U.S. and the U.K.

An inventor's path is chorused with groans, riddled with fist-banging and punctuated by head scratches.

You need a stubborn belief in an idea in order to see it realised.

[M]anufacturing, science and engineering are ... incredibly creative. I'd venture to say more so than creative advertising agencies and things that are known as the creative industries.

A lot of people give up when the world seems to be against them, but that's the point when you should push a little harder. I use the analogy of running a race. It seems as though you can’t carry on, but if you just get through the pain barrier, you'll see the end and be okay. Often, just around the corner is where the solution will happen.

After the idea, there is plenty of time to learn the technology

Life is a mountain of solvable problems and I enjoy that.

Britain's great strength is its innovative, design and engineering natural ability and we're not using it.

Today, computers are almost second nature to most of us.

Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.

In order to fix it, you need a passionate anger about something that doesn't work well.

Business is constantly changing, constantly evolving.

Far too few designers put any thought into usability, ending up with a great product that's completely inaccessible.

If you want to do something different, you’re going to come up against a lot of naysayers.

The computer dictates how you do something, whereas with a pencil you're totally free.

I just want things to work properly.

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.

Everyone has ideas. They may be too busy or lack the confidence or technical ability to carry them out. But I want to carry them out. It is a matter of getting up and doing it.

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.

Enjoy failure and learn from it. You never learn from success.

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.

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.