I would argue that education, actual learning - it is hard work. It's very personal. Your parents don't teach you anything. Your teachers don't teach you anything. The government doesn't teach you anything. You read it. You don't understand it; you read it again. You break a pencil and read it again.

Dean Kamen

Every once in a while, a new technology, an old problem, and a big idea turn into an innovation.

Dean Kamen

The city needs a car like a fish needs a bicycle.

Dean Kamen

I've never regretted anything I've done, even the things that I've failed at. I've often regretted not trying something really big, because you'll never know.

Dean Kamen

My biggest worry is I'm running out of time and energy. Thirty years ago I thought 10 years was a really long time.

Dean Kamen

If history is any indication, all truths will eventually turn out to be false.

Dean Kamen

Everybody has to be able to participate in a future that they want to live for. That's what technology can do.

Dean Kamen

We're working on ways to make potable water from polluted water, whether it has organics in it or salt from the ocean, at very low energy input.

Dean Kamen

I think an education is not only important, it is the most important thing you can do with your life.

Dean Kamen

Nothing that has value, real value, has no cost. Not freedom, not food, not shelter, not healthcare.

Dean Kamen

Sometimes we crash and burn. It's better to do it in private.

Dean Kamen

Whatever the marketplace, if talented people are given resources, they're going to keep driving us to having better, simpler, cheaper solutions to problems.

Dean Kamen

You have teenagers thinking they're going to make millions as NBA stars when that's not realistic for even 1 percent of them. Becoming a scientist or engineer is.

Dean Kamen

I do not want to waste any time. And if you are not working on important things, you are wasting time.

Dean Kamen

I'm a human entropy producer.

Dean Kamen

If you're going to fail, you might as well fail at the big ones.

Dean Kamen

As we move towards 8 or 10 billion people on the planet, there's a little less gold per capita. Each one of us will continue to be fighting over an ever smaller percentage of total resources. This is not a happy thought.

Dean Kamen

To me, innovations are the wheel, fire, language, movable type. There are not 3 million innovations; there are 3 million inventions.

Dean Kamen

Sporting competitions seem to be what we obsess over, frankly. So if we can put engineering, science, technology into a format of healthy, fun competition, we can attract all sorts of kids that might not see the kind of activity we do as accessible or rewarding.

Dean Kamen

A patent, or invention, is any assemblage of technologies or ideas that you can put together that nobody put together that way before. That's how the patent office defines it. That's an invention.

Dean Kamen

I'd rather lose my own money than someone else's.

Dean Kamen