Vannevar Bush

“We make progress, lots of progress, in nearly every intellectual field, only to find that the more we probe, the faster our field of ignorance expands.”

“The point is that an invention is valueless unless it is joined with a number of other accomplishments. Promotion, financing, development, engineering, marketing, and so on. If the independent inventor believes otherwise, his invention will turn out to be a li…”

“Industries can get bogged down and stagnate, and so to ensure that things move forward, the rise of small independent companies is essential.”

“I made plenty of mistakes, and the worst one was that I got mad. It is alright to get mad, and it is all wrong to show it. I showed it.”

“Alfred Lee Loomis is on record saying, hey, out of every single American that if they died, their death would cause the greatest setback to the American war effort in World War II. Number one is FDR, and he says Van Busch would be second or third.”

“In an industry that has become closely standardized, where nearly all competing companies are comfortably making profits, minor improvements can readily be introduced, but major improvements are up against a stone wall. The prosperous company sees no need to c…”

“A man of intelligence, and only such will fit the need, can become well acquainted with the subject in a surprisingly short time if he puts his mind to it. This is not to master it, but to arrive at a point where he speaks the language and can judge whether a …”

“The key ideas arose in the special groups that were working for months and years with the problems, and they arose from nowhere else.”

“There should never be, throughout an organization, any doubt as to where authority for making decisions resides, or any doubt that they will be promptly made.”

“Putnam had some of the characteristics of the best type of promoter in industry. He was well liked by men with lots of drive and often disliked by those with less.”

“Because he was the conceptual architect of what we now call the innovation pipeline, in which basic research leads to applied research, which is then commercialized.”

“There are two primary ways in which to lose a battle or a campaign, assuming nearly equal antagonists. One is to have confused lines of authority. And says the other is to have a top, this is how you lose, is to have a top commander with poor judgment.”

“You need to realize that formal relations of men, what we think is professional relationships are actually intertwined with the personal relationships behind the professional relationships. And he'll remark time and time again, how malleable the world is when …”

“The best way to limit monopoly economic power, he insisted, was through the advent of small new industrial units, what we call startups today, for if these latter have half a chance, they can cut rings around the great stodgy businesses.”

“Discipline must be self-applied or it will be externally imposed.”

“You're going to have throughout your entire life, you're going to have people that try to bully or try to enforce their will on you, and those kind of people tend to only respect people that actually push back.”

“The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Vannevar Bush.”

“He is the most important American ever. In the history in terms of connecting the scientific field, private enterprise, and the government. The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Vannevar Bush.”

“He is the most important American ever. In the history in terms of connecting the scientific field, private enterprise, and the government. The most important person to keep alive for the American war effort was FDR. The second one was Vannevar Bush.”

“One of Vannevar Bush's deepest convictions was that specialization is the death of genius, and he has a great quote about this. He says, in these days, when there's a tendency to specialize so closely, it is well for us to be reminded that the possibilities of…”

“I've been working on three different ideas simultaneously, and strangely enough, it seems a more productive method than sticking to one problem.”