"Rail travel at high speed is not possible because passengers, unable to breathe, would die of asphyxia." -- Dr. Dionysus Lardner, 1793-1859
钻油？用钻头能钻出石油？你脑子进水了么？——1859年德雷克要勘探石油时候的反对者
"Drill for oil? You mean drill into the ground to try and find oil? You're crazy." -- Workers whom Edwin L. Drake tried to enlist to his project to drill for oil in 1859.
汽车已经没什么可发展的了。这些年内燃机的原理就没有什么改进么。——美国科学杂志，1909
"That the automobile has reached the limit of its development is suggested by the fact that during the last year no improvements of a radical nature have been introduced." -- Scientific American, 1909
能发明的基本上都被发明了。——美国专利局局长 查尔斯·迪尔，1899
"Everything that can be invented has been invented." -- Charles H. Duell, Commissioner, U.S. Office of Patents, 1899
"Heavier than air flying machines are impossible." -- Lord Kelvin (1824-1907)
无线电没有未来。——开尔文 爵士
"Radio has no future." -- Lord Kelvin(1824-1907)
X射线就是骗人的货。——开尔文 爵士
"X-rays will prove to be a hoax." -- Lord Kelvin, president, Royal Society, 1895
电磁风暴和太阳斑没什么联系，至于太阳周期那更是个巧合。——开尔文 爵士
"It seems as if we may also be forced to conclude that the supposed connection between magnetic storms and sun-spots is unreal, and that the seeming agreement between periods has been a mere coincidence." -- Lord Kelvin, 1892
"The Americans have need of the telephone, but we do not. We have plenty of messenger boys." -- Sir William Preece, chief engineer of the British Post Office, 1876.
"Professor Goddard...does not know the relation of action to re-action, and the need to have something better than a vacuum against which to react....he only seems to lack the knowledge ladled out daily in high schools." -- 1920 New York Times editorial on Robert Goddard's rocket work. [The New York Times printed a retraction to this---in 1969, when the Apollo 11 astronauts were on their way to the Moon.]
登陆月球或月球行走对当前的技术来说太难了，要想实现起码也要200年后才行。——科学文摘 1948
"Landing and moving about on the moon offers so many serious problems for human beings that it may take science another 200 years to lick them." -- Science Digest, 1948
"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming." -- Lee De Forest, 1926
"The ordinary 'horseless carriage' is at present a luxury for the wealthy; and although its price will probably fall in the future, it will never, of course, come into as common use as the bicycle." -- Literary Digest, 1899
"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
物理学，会在六个月之内走到尽头。——诺贝尔奖获得者、近代量子力学创始人之一 马克思·波恩
"Physics, as we know it, will be over in six months." -- Max Born, 1928
"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 [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 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
现在我们连利用核能最微弱的证据都没有。——爱因斯坦，1932
"There is not the slightest indication that nuclear energy will be obtainable." -- Albert Einstein, 1932
交流电是无用的，因为他太危险了，他可以像闪电一样劈死一个人。直流电才是安全的。——爱迪生
"Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous. . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe." -- Thomas Edison
我觉得全世界可能只能卖出五台计算机吧。——沃森，IBM主席，1943
"I think there is a world market for maybe five computers." -- Thomas Watson, chairman of IBM, 1943
演员们表演就可以了，谁TM愿意听他们的声音呢？——华纳兄弟公司创始人 哈利·华纳
"Who the hell wants to hear actors talk?" -- H. M. Warner, Warner Brothers, 1927
640K内存妥妥够用了。——比尔盖茨，1981
"640K ought to be enough for anybody." -- Bill Gates, 1981
艾滋病就像只温顺的小猫，没什么。——1988，UC伯克利大学生物分子学教授 迪斯贝格
“That virus is a pussycat.” — Dr. Peter Duesberg, molecular-biology professor at U.C. Berkeley, on HIV, 1988