James Dyson

“In order to fix it, you need a passionate anger about something that doesn't work well.”

“Some people are academically inclined, some vocationally and we shouldn't penalise the latter.”

“Designing aircraft and racing cars is an extremely exciting thing.”

“Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore.”

“I grew up running miles of the Norfolk coastline. I'd think nothing of a six-mile run before breakfast. I still run, though not as far and not before muesli.”

“If you invent something, you're doing a creative act. It's like writing a novel or composing music. You put your heart and soul into it, and money. It's years of your life, it's your house r...”

“I'm not into politics but I am committed to a cause: ensuring design technology and engineering stays on the U.K. curriculum, alongside science and maths - grounding abstract theory, merging...”

“When decisions on nuclear power stations and runways are delayed and the government dilly-dallies, people think they aren't important.”

“What I often do is just think of a completely obtuse thing to do, almost the wrong thing to do. That often works because you start a different approach, something no one has tried.”

“In the digital age of 'overnight' success stories such as Facebook, the hard slog is easily overlooked.”

“Engineering is treated with disdain, on the whole. It's considered to be rather boring and irrelevant, yet neither of those is true.”

“When I started off, I was working in a shed behind my house. All I had was a drill, an electric drill. That was the only machine I had.”

“The way the world is going, it's technology driven. And it isn't just driven by the old super powers, it's driven by the far east and new emerging economies.”

“Emerging markets are hugely important.”

“When you say 'design,' everybody thinks of magazine pages. So it's an emotive word. Everybody thinks it's how something looks, whereas for me, design is pretty much everything.”

“I think the search engines are the new equivalent of publishing: an enabler of information.”

“Failure is an enigma. You worry about it, and it teaches you something.”

“Nobody wants the expenditure of a lease on a factory which lasts 21 years. You can't plan 21 years ahead.”

“In the past, the U.K. got away with selling things that weren't unusual. Now it's no use trying to export without having something that's unusual and better.”

“Engineering undergraduates should not be charged fees. They should receive grants, not student loans, and the government will get the money back long-term from increased exports.”