Time & Perspective Quote by Dean Kamen

History doesn’t just humble our egos; it humiliates our certainty. Dean Kamen’s line lands like a warning label on the shiny packaging of innovation: today’s “truth” is often tomorrow’s discarded prototype. Coming from an inventor, it’s less philosophical despair than operating manual. The workshop teaches a brutal lesson: what works “in theory” routinely fails in the field, and what’s proven can be outpaced by a better design, a new material, or a changed environment.

The rhetorical trick is the absolutism. “All truths” is intentionally reckless, a provocation that forces the reader to feel the floor tilt. Kamen isn’t making a careful epistemological claim; he’s attacking the posture of permanence that institutions love. “If history is any indication” invokes science’s greatest strength - revision - while also skewering how often people treat consensus like a finish line. The subtext: progress depends on being willing to look wrong, publicly, repeatedly. That’s not just a mindset; it’s a cultural stance against bureaucracies, credentialism, and the comforting myth that experts can close the case.

Context matters here because innovation is a business of prediction under uncertainty. In tech and engineering, “truth” is frequently a temporary best model, useful until reality supplies counterexamples. Kamen’s line reads as a defense of intellectual agility: build systems, policies, and products that expect correction. If you’re not preparing to update your “truth,” you’re not doing invention; you’re doing ideology.