James Dyson's Quotes

People buy products if they're better.

People will make leaps of faith and get excited by your product if you just get it in front of them.

Reality TV is anything but.

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

Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.

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

The British judiciary needs to support intellectual property.

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

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

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

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

The wonderful thing about Apple technology is just how intuitive it is.

There's nothing wrong with things taking time.

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

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.

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

We should have A-levels in vocational subjects.

We should learn to live more with our climate and rely less on electricity to alter our climate.

Well, air-conditioning is not a good thing.

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.

When you can't compete on cost, compete on quality.

You don't get inspiration sitting at a drawing board or in front of your computer.

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

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.

China has all the advantages in the world. But it doesn't have a history of free thinking, risk-taking pioneers - the kind of people the U.S. is built upon.

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.

I grew up running miles of the Norfolk coastline. I'd think nothing of a six-mile run before breakfast. I still run, though not as far and not before muesli.

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'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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Now, we don't teach children in schools to be creative. We don't teach them to experiment. We want them to fill in the right answer, tick the right answer in the box.

The U.S. is the biggest investor in research and development in the world. It has the best universities. Keeping them supplied with the best talent is essential.

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.

Well, I'm rather attracted to rather prosaic things like vacuum cleaners and hand dryers. Where people haven't apparently made them with a great love for what they're doing.

What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.

When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.

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.

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

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

As a modern employer you have to treat people well.

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

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

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

Anger is a good motivator.

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.

Beauty can come in strange forms.

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

Business is constantly changing, constantly evolving.

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

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

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.

Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.

Don't listen to experts.

Emerging markets are hugely important.

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

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

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