Expert Mistakes

Here's our compilation of quotes from famous people trying to predict the future – only to look dumb in retrospect!

Warning: Since the quotes are sourced from the internet, we cannot guarantee that some of them aren't apocryphal.

"So many centuries after the Creation, it is unlikely that anyone could find hitherto unknown lands of any value."

- Committee advising King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain (regarding a proposal by Christopher Columbus), 1486.

"Mr. President, ‘railroad’ carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 miles per hour by ‘engines’ which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to crops, scaring the livestock and frightening women and children. The Almighty certainly never intended that people should travel at such breakneck speed."

- Martin Van Buren, New York Governor (and future U.S. President) advising then-president Andrew Jackson in 1830.

"No one will pay good money to get from Berlin to Potsdam in one hour when he can ride his horse there in one day for free."

- King William I of Prussia (on learning of the invention of trains), 1864.

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon"

- Sir John Eric Ericksen, Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria, 1873.

"This telephone has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."

- William Orton, Western Union president, in an 1876 internal memo.

"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys."

- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.

"Good enough for our transatlantic friends... but unworthy of the attention of practical or scientific men."

- British Parliamentary Committee (referring to Thomas Edison's light bulb) in 1878.

"Such startling announcements as these should be depreciated as being unworthy of science and mischievous to its true progress."

-Sir William Siemens, younger brother of the founder of Siemens (on Edison's light bulb) in 1880.

"Everyone acquainted with the subject will recognize it as a conspicuous failure."

- Henry Morton, president of the Stevens Institute of Technology (on the business prospects for Edison's light bulb) in 1880.

"The phonograph has no commercial value at all."

- Thomas Edison, 1880.

"On the day when two army camps may mutually annihilate each other in a second, all civilised nations will probably recoil with horror and disband their troops."

- Albert Nobel, after inventing dynamite (claiming it would put an end to war forever) in 1892.

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."

- Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1883.

"We are probably nearing the limit of all we can know about astronomy."

- Simon Newcomb, famous astronomer and mathematician, 1888.

"Fooling around with alternating current (AC) is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever."

- Thomas Edison, 1889.

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."

- Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1895.

"There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now; all that remains is more and more precise measurement."

- Lord Kelvin, president of the Royal Society, 1900.

"I must confess that my imagination refuses to see any sort of submarine doing anything but suffocating its crew and floundering at sea."

- H.G. Wells, 1901.

"Flight by machines heavier than air is unpractical (sic) and insignificant, if not utterly impossible."

- Simon Newcomb, famous astronomer and mathematician, 1902.

"The cinema is little more than a fad. It’s canned drama. What audiences really want to see is flesh and blood on the stage."

- Charlie Chaplin, 1916.

"The radio craze will die out in time."

- Thomas Edison, 1922

“There is no likelihood man can ever tap the power of the atom.”

- Robert Millikan, Nobel Prize in Physics, 1923 (on the idea of a nuclear bomb)

"To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth – all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances."

- Lee de Forest, famous investor and the owner of over 300 patents, 1926.

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility."

- Lee de Forest, famous investor and the owner of over 300 patents, 1926.

"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?"

- H. M. Warner, founder of Warner Brothers, in 1927.

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"

- David Sarnoff's associates when asked to invest in radio in the 1920s (Sarnoff, head of RCA, went on to be a radio and television pioneer).

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will ever be obtainable. It would mean that the atom would have to be shattered at will."

- Albert Einstein, 1932.

"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 transformation of these atoms is talking moonshine."

- Ernest Rutherford, known as the father of nuclear physics, 1933.

"With this piece of paper bearing his signature I have secured for us, peace in our time"

- Neville Chamberlin (after signing the peace treaty with Hitler) in 1938.

"Gone With the Wind is going to be the biggest flop in Hollywood history. I'm just glad it'll be Clark Gable who's falling on his face not Gary Cooper."

- Gary Cooper, turning down the lead in Gone With The Wind, circa 1939.

"Atomic energy might be as good as our present-day explosives, but it is unlikely to produce anything very much more dangerous."

- Winston Churchill, 1939.

"Whatever happens, the U.S. Navy is not going to be caught napping."

- Frank Knox, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, on December 4, 1941 (three days before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor).

"You have only to kick down the door, and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down."

- Hitler to his generals before attacking the Soviet Union, circa 1941.

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."

- Thomas Watson, IBM Chairman, 1943.

"You better get secretarial work or get married."

- Emmeline Snively, Blue Book Modelling Agency director (advising aspiring model Marilyn Monroe) in 1944.

"This is the biggest fool thing we have ever done. The bomb will never go off, and I speak as an expert in explosives."

- Admiral William D. Leahy, advising President Truman against using the atomic bomb in 1945.

"Television won't be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months. People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night."

- Darryl Zanuck, at 20th Century Fox, in 1946.

"Television won't last. It's a flash in the pan."

- Mary Somerville, director at the BBC, 1948.

"It would appear we have reached the limits of what it is possible to achieve with computer technology."

- John von Neumann, famous computer scientist, 1949.

"The Japanese don't make anything the people in the U.S. would want."

- John Foster Dulles, U.S. Secretary of State, in 1954.

"Our children will enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter."

- Lewis L. Strauss, chairman of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, 1954

"If excessive smoking actually plays a role in the production of lung cancer, it seems to be a minor one."

- W.C. Heuper, National Cancer Institute, 1954.

"Before man reaches the moon, your mail will be delivered within hours from New York to Australia by guided missiles. We stand on the threshold of rocket mail."

- Arthur Summerfield, U.S. Postmaster General, 1959.

"The world potential market for copying machines is 5,000 at most."

- IBM executive (upon hearing a business pitch from the eventual founders of Xerox) in 1959.

"There is practically no chance communications space satellites will be used to provide better telephone, telegraph, television, or radio service inside the United States."

- T.A.M. Craven, Federal Communications Commissioner, 1961

"We will bury you – and you capitalists will sell us the shovels to do it with."

- Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet Premier, 1962.

"We don't like their sound, and guitar music is on the way out."

- Decca Recording Co. rejecting the Beatles, 1962.

"I give them about a year."

- Ray Bloch, musical director for "The Ed Sullivan Show" after the Beatles performed in 1964.

"Reagan doesn't have that presidential look."

- United Artists Executive, rejecting then-actor Ronald Reagan as lead in the film The Best Man, circa 1964.

"The concept is interesting and well-formed, but in order to earn better than a 'C', the idea must be feasible."

- A Yale University management professor, in response to student Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service (circa 1965) – Smith went on to found Federal Express Corp.

"By 1985, machines will be capable of doing any work Man can do."

- Herbert Simon, artificial intelligence pioneer, 1965.

"It will be years - not in my time - before a woman will become Prime Minister."

- Margaret Thatcher in 1969 (she was elected U.K. Prime Minister only 10 years later).

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."

- Ken Olsen, president, chairman and founder of Digital Equipment, 1977.

"640K ought to be enough for anybody."

- Bill Gates, 1981.

"Cellular phones will absolutely not replace local wire systems."

- Marty Cooper, American engineer who led the team built the first mobile cellular phone, 1981.

"$100 million dollars is way too much to pay for Microsoft."

- IBM Executives, 1982.

"I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."

- Bill Gates, 1987.

"We will never make a 32-bit operating system."

- Bill Gates, 1989.

"The idea of a personal communicator in every pocket is a 'pipe dream driven by greed.'"

- Andy Grove, Intel CEO, 1992.

"I predict the Internet will soon go spectacularly supernova and in 1996 catastrophically collapse."

- Robert Metcalfe, 3Com founder, 1995.

“Children just aren’t interested in witches and wizards anymore.”

- Publishing executive (writing to J.K Rowling) in 1996

"I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."

- Michael Dell in 1997 (speaking about Apple).

"Apple is already dead."

- Nathan Myhrvold, Microsoft CTO, 1997.

"By 2005 or so, it will become clear that the Internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's"

- Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize-winning economist, 1998 (in an article warning about the dangers of trying to predict the future).

"Two years from now, spam will be solved." / "Spam will be a thing of the past in two years' time."

- Bill Gates, 2004.

"There's just not that many videos I want to watch."

- Steve Chen, YouTube co-founder, in 2005.

"Next Christmas the iPod will be dead, finished, gone, kaput."

- Alan Sugar, British business magnate and media personality, 2005

"There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share."

- Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, in 2007.

“No one’s going to buy a big phone.”

- Steve Jobs, 2010

Note

Omitted from the list is "Everything that can be invented has been invented", by Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899. The quote has been proven to be an urban legend.

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