Via Buzzfeed
The president of the Michigan Savings Bank advising Henry Ford’s lawyer, Horace Rackham, not to invest in the Ford Motor Company, 1903.
Variety magazine, 1955.
Charles Darwin, writing in the foreword to On the Origin of Species, 1859.
Time magazine, 1968.
Economist Irving Fisher in October 1929, three days before the stock market crash that triggered the Great Depression.
A Decca Records executive to the band’s manager, Brian Epstein, following an audition in 1962. He continued: “We don’t like your boys’ sound. Groups are out. Four-piece groups with guitars, particularly, are finished.”
John Langdon-Davies, A Short History of the Future, 1936.
Mary Somerville, pioneer of radio educational broadcasts, 1948.
New York Times, 1936.
Guglielmo Marconi, pioneer of radio, writing in Technical World magazine, October 1912.
Surgeon General of the United States William H. Stewart, speaking to the U.S. Congress in 1969.
Kaiser Wilhelm II to German troops at the outset of World War One, August 1914.
Margaret Thatcher, Oct. 26, 1969.
Dr. Dionysys Larder, science writer and academic, in 1828.
Alan Sugar, 2005.
Robert Millikan, American physicist and Nobel Prize winner, 1923.
William Orton, president of Western Union, in 1876, when Alexander Graham Bell tried to sell the company his invention.
Robert Metcalfe, inventor of Ethernet, in InfoWorld magazine, December 1995.
Charlie Chaplin in 1916, two years into his big-screen acting career. The rest of the quote: “It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage.”
Sci-fi writer Bruce Sterling in The New York Times, 2007.
An aide to British military commander Field Marshal Haig wrote this in a report following a tank demonstration, 1916.
Byte magazine editor Edmund DeJesus, 1998.
Thomas Edison, 1889. The lightbulb inventor insisted his own direct current (DC) system was superior to competitor George Westinghouse’s AC power, and took every opportunity to discredit alternating current.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer, 2007.
Popular Mechanics, 1949.
Via Buzzfeed
