"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to
breathe, would die of asphyxia."
-- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859

"What can be more palpably absurd than the prospect held out of
locomotives travelling twice the speed of stagecoaches?"
-- Quarterly Review, 1825

"Railroad Carriages are pulled at the enormous speed of 15 mph by engines
which, in addition to endangering life and limb of passengers, roar and
snort their way through the countryside, setting fire to the 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

"I can accept the theory of relativity as little as I can accept the
existence of atoms and other such dogmas."
-- Ernst Mach (1838-1916)

"Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months." -- Max Born, 1928

"X-rays will prove to be a hoax."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

"Radio has no future."
-- Lord Kelvin

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

"Flight by machines heavier than air is impractical and insignificant, if
not utterly impossible."
-- Simon Newcomb, Director, U.S. Naval Observatory, 1902

"Aerial flight is one of that class of problems with which man will never
be able to cope."
-- Simon Newcomb, 1903

"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 H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1910

"The popular mind often pictures gigantic flying machines speeding across
the Atlantic carrying innumerable passengers in a way analogous to our
modern steam ships. . . it seems safe to say that such ideas are wholly
visionary and even if the machine could get across with one or two
passengers the expense would be prohibitive to any but the capitalist who
could use his own yacht."
-- William Henry Pickering, Astronomer, 1910

"A popular fantasy is to suppose that flying machines could
be used to drop dynamite on the enemy in time of war."
-- William H. Pickering, Director, Harvard College Observatory, 1908

"Airplanes are interesting toys but of no military value."
-- Marechal Ferdinand Foch, Professor of Strategy, Ecole Superieure de
Guerre

"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

"By no possibility can the carriage of freight or passengers through
mid-air compete with their carriage on the earth's surface. The field
for aerial navigation is then limited to military use and for sporting
purposes. The former is doubtful, the latter is fairly certain."
-- Hugh Dryden, 1908

"The [flying] machines will eventually be fast; they will be used in
sport but they should not be thought of as commercial carriers."
-- Octave Chanute, 1910

"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

"As far as sinking a ship with a bomb is concerned, you just can't do it."
-- Rear Admiral Clark Woodward, 1939

"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."
-- U. S. National Academy Of Science, 1940

"Although we are living in what may be termed the steam era and our Navy
is a steam navy, I have in this 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."
-- Captain Alston, RN, Manual of Seamanship, 1859

"I do not believe in the commercial possibility of induced radioactivity."
-- J. B. S. Haldane

"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

"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be
obtainable."
-- Albert Einstein, 1932

"It can be taken for granted that before 1980 ships, aircraft, locomotives
and even automobiles will be atomically fueled."
-- David Sarnoff, 1955

"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 suffocating its crew and
foundering at sea."
-- H. G. Wells, 1901