Success Quote by Charles F. Kettering

Kettering makes failure sound less like a bruise and more like a craft, and that word choice is the tell. An inventor doesn’t romanticize setbacks out of kindness; he does it because the job description demands it. Calling failing “one of the greatest arts” smuggles in a whole philosophy of work: progress isn’t a straight line toward success, it’s a disciplined relationship with error.

The intent is practical persuasion. Kettering is talking to engineers, managers, and tinkerers who live under the tyranny of the working prototype. “Not a disgrace” pushes back against the social instinct to treat mistakes as moral deficiencies. In labs and factories, shame is expensive: it makes people hide bad results, avoid risky ideas, and cling to safe incrementalism. By reframing failure as an “art,” he elevates the iterative grind - the false starts, the dead ends, the embarrassing prototypes - into something that can be practiced, refined, even mastered.

The subtext is also a quiet critique of institutions that punish experimentation. If failing is an art, then success isn’t proof of virtue; it’s often just the survivor of many unsuccessful attempts, plus good timing and resources. That’s a pointed message in early 20th-century American industry, where Kettering helped build the modern R&D model at GM: innovation as an organized system, not a lone-genius miracle.

It works because it flatters the listener without lying. You can fail and still be competent - as long as you fail intelligently, visibly, and forward.