"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy."

- Drillers who Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859

"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, École Supérieure de Guerre, France

"Everything that can be invented, has been invented."

- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, US Office of Patents, 1899

"The super computer is technologically impossible. It would take all of the water that flows over Niagara Falls to cool the heat generated by the number of vacuum tubes required."

- Professor of Electrical Engineering, New York University

"I don't know what use any one could find for a machine that would make copies of documents. It certainly couldn't be a feasible business by itself."

- the head of IBM, refusing to back the idea, forcing the inventor to found Xerox

"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

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

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