@ Although we are living in what may be termed the steam era and our Navy is a steam navy, I have in his work wholly excluded the consideration of steam power, as, owing to the great cost of coal and the impossibility of providing stowage for it except to a limited extent, the application of steam power for ordinary purposes must be strictly auxiliary and subordinate and its employment in general service the exception rather than the rule. Manual of Seamanship Captain Alston, RN 1859 @ You'll never make it -- four groups are out. Anonymous record company executive to the Beatles 1962 @ Even considering the improvements possible...the gas turbine could hardly be considered a feasible application to airplanes because of the difficulties of complying with the stringent weight requirements. US National Academy Of Science 1940 @ People have been talking about a 3,000 mile high-angle rocket shot from one continent to another, carrying an atomic bomb and so directed as to be a precise weapon... I think we can leave that out of our thinking. Dr. Vannevar Bush 1945 @ Nobody now fears that a Japanese fleet could deal an unexpected blow at our Pacific possessions... Radio makes surprise impossible. Josephus Daniels 1922 @ Everything that can be invented has been invented. Charles H. Duell U.S. Commissioner for Patents 1899 @ Fooling around with alternating current is a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. Thomas Edison @ There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be obtainable. Albert Einstein 1932 @ 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 De Forest 1926 @ The Americans are good about making fancy cars and refrigerators, but that doesn't mean they are any good at making aircraft. They are bluffing. They are excellent at bluffing. Hermann Goering 1942 @ The actual building of roads devoted to motor cars is not for the near future, in spite of many rumours to that effect. Harper's Weekly 1902 @ Inventions have long since reached their limit, and I see no hope for future improvements. Julius Frontenus 10 A..D. @ 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. Literary Digest 1899 @ Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them. Science Digest 1948 @ Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia. Dr. Dionysus Lardner 1793-1859 @ I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity. J.B.S. Haldane @ The aeroplane is the invention of the devil and will never play any part in such a serious business as the defence of a nation. Sir Sam Hughes (Canadian Minister of Defence) 1914 @ X-rays will prove to be a hoax. Lord Kelvin @ Radio has no future. Lord Kelvin @ Heavier than air flying machines are impossible. Lord Kelvin 1895 @ Television won't matter in your lifetime or mine. R.S. Lambert (Canadian Broadcaster) 1936 @ No one will ever be able to measure nerve impulse speed. Johannes Muller German Physiologist (1846) @ Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if not utterly impossible. Simon Newcomb 1902 @ Ariel flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never be able to cope. Simon Newcomb 1903! @ A popular fantasy is to suppose that flying machines could be used to drop dynamite on the enemy in time of war. William Henry Pickering 1908 @ The resistance of air increases as the square of the speed and works as the cube [of speed].... It is clear that with our present devices there is no hope of aircraft competing for racing speed with either our locomotives or automobiles. William Henry Pickering 1910 @ What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of locomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches? Quartely Review 1825 @ Our boys are not going to be sent into foreign wars. Franklin D. Roosevelt October 30, 1940 @ The energy produced by the breaking down of the atom is a very poor kind of thing. Anyone who expects a source of power from the transformations of these atoms is talking moonshine. Ernest Rutherford 1930 @ It can be taken for granted that before 1980 ships, aircraft, locomotives and even automobiles will be atomically fueled. David Sarnoff 1955 @ The director of Military Aeronautics of France has decided to discontinue the purchase of monoplanes, their place to be filled entirely with bi-planes. This decision practically sounds the death knell of the monoplane as a military instrunent. Scientific American 1915 @ That the automobile has reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the last year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced. Scientific American 1909 @ They couldn't hit an elephant at this distance! Major General John Sedgwick Spotsylvania Courthouse May 1864 @ Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys which distract our attention from serious things. We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate. Henry David Thoreau @ I must confess that my imagination, in spite even of spurring, refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but soffocating its crew and foundering at sea. H.G. Wells 1901 @ As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it. Rear Admiral Clark Woodward 1939 @ Space travel is utter bilge. Richard Woolley Astronomer Royal (1956) @