Lonnie Johnson Quotes

Lonnie Johnson

Profession : Inventor

Birth : October 6, 1949

Peer review is fine, as long as you're making incremental improvements to a technology.

Lonnie Johnson

Being an independent inventor is tough. You develop a product, patent it, then you're looking for someone who will see the benefit from this technology. You assume all the investment and all the risk. It can be a challenge.

Lonnie Johnson

I would say that engineering has been a very positive experience overall, but usually coming into the situation it would be one of being underestimated. People would actually have low expectations. But I would take advantage of it quite honestly, because I would take my time to underestimate the situation.

Lonnie Johnson

Nobody's going to step in and dump a lot of money and make it easy. Unless you have a lot of money, you have to pay your dues and make a personal sacrifice.

Lonnie Johnson

Lady Luck is indifferent. She smiles sometimes, and she frowns sometimes.

Lonnie Johnson

When I think back on my childhood and the things that happened to me, there were certain periods of time where I felt like I was being saved for something. I feel like I have a gift, and it would be a sin to waste it.

Lonnie Johnson

I received a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering, then graduated with a masters in nuclear engineering.

Lonnie Johnson

I've invented a new type of engine that converts heat directly into electricity with no moving mechanical parts. It's called the Johnson Thermo-Electrochemical Converter, the JTEC.

Lonnie Johnson

Sitting still, a person produces about 100 watts of heat. What if you could use that to charge your cell phone?

Lonnie Johnson

I love playing around with ideas and turning them into something useful or fun.

Lonnie Johnson

As an inventor, it's a rite of passage to have an engine. I'd like to have my own engine someday.

Lonnie Johnson

I didn't want to grow old and find that I didn't do what I could have done, that I didn't put my best foot forward. I didn't want to have any regrets.

Lonnie Johnson

I have never really understood why in this country so many people look down on black people.

Lonnie Johnson

Most of my career as an engineer, I was put in environments where I was the only person of color in the room.

Lonnie Johnson

I don't think there's any project that I started that I ever stopped working on.

Lonnie Johnson

I think America's strength is in innovation.

Lonnie Johnson

I've always liked to tinker with things.

Lonnie Johnson

In 1975, I was called to active duty in the Air Force, studying U.S. space launches that used nuclear power. I felt it was a big deal to be involved in such an important project - we were providing technical support for launch recommendations that ultimately went to the president.

Lonnie Johnson

In 1968 when I was in high school I built a four-foot-tall remote control robot with pneumatic cylinders that operated his hands. My robot won first place at a science competition at the University of Alabama where my high school was the only African-American school represented. That was a huge moral victory.

Lonnie Johnson

I wound up getting offered a job at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where I invented a power supply mechanism for the Galileo space craft which was in orbit around Jupiter until 2003.

Lonnie Johnson