Varta, iit.humor

"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 Fred Smith's paper proposing reliable overnight delivery service
(Smith went on to found
Federal Express Corp.)

"There is no reason anyone would want a computer in their home."
-- Ken Olson, president, chairman and founder of
Digital Equipment Corp., 1977

"Computers in the future may weigh no more than 1.5 tons."
-- Popular Mechanics, forecasting the relentless march
of science, 1949

"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers."
-- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943

"So we went to Atari and said, 'Hey, we've got this amazing thing, even
built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us?
Or we'll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we'll come
work for you.' And they said, 'No.' So then we went to Hewlett-Packard, and
they said, 'Hey, we don't need you. You haven't got through college yet.'"
-- Apple Computer Inc. founder Steve Jobs on attempts to get Atari and
H-P interested in his and Steve Wozniak's personal computer

"The wireless music box has no imaginable commercial value. Who would
pay for a message sent to nobody in particular?"
-- David Sarnoff's associates in response to his urgings for investment in radio in the 1920s

"This 'telephone' has too many shortcomings to be seriously considered
as a means of communication. The device is inherently of no value to us."
-- Western Union internal memo, 1876

"Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible."
-- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895

"If I had thought about it, I wouldn't have done the experiment. The
literature was full of examples that said you can't do this."
-- Spencer Silver on the work that led to the unique
adhesives for 3-M "Post-It" Notepads

"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil?
You're crazy."
-- Drillers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist for
his project to
drill for oil in 1859

"A cookie store is a bad idea. Besides, the market research reports say
America likes crispy cookies, not soft and chewy cookies like you
make."
-- Response to Debbi Fields' idea of starting Mrs. Fields' Cookies

"I have traveled the length and breadth of this
country and talked with
the best people, and I can assure you that data
processing is a fad that
won't last out the year."
-- The editor in charge of business books for Prentice
Hall, 1957

"But what ... is it good for?"
--Engineer at the Advanced Computing Systems Division
of IBM, 1968,
commenting on the microchip

"Professor Goddard does not know the relation between
action and
reaction and the need to have something better than a
vacuum against which to
react. He seems to lack the basic knowledge ladled out
daily in high schools."
-- 1921 New York Times editorial about Robert
Goddard's revolutionary
rocket work

"You want to have consistent and uniform muscle
development across all
of your muscles? It can't be done. It's just a fact of
life. You just have
to accept inconsistent muscle development as an
unalterable condition of
weight training."
-- Response to Arthur Jones, who solved the
"unsolvable" problem by
inventing Nautilus.

"Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently
high plateau."
-- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics, Yale
University, 1929

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

"Louis Pasteur's theory of germs is ridiculous
fiction".
-- Pierre Pachet, Professor of Physiology at Toulouse,
1872

"The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be
shut from the
intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon".
-- Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed
Surgeon-Extraordinary
to Queen Victoria, 1873

"640K (of RAM) ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981

"Everything that can be invented has been invented."
-- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of
Patents, 1899.

These have been posted and reposted so many times on iitb.humor but I don't mind reading them again and again. They make you check yourself before making any such statements :-)