Thomas A. Edison Quotes
-
Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best.
-
The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness... Unfortunately, many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
-
During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem.
-
The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization.... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation
-
It is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have benefit of their own gilt-edge credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency-instead of bankers receiving the benefit of the people's credit in interest-bearing bonds. If the United States Government will adopt this policy of increasing its national wealth without contributing to the interest collector-for the whole national debt is made up on interest charges-then you will see an era of progress and prosperity in this country such as could never have come otherwise.
-
Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.
-
If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
-
There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.
-
Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.
-
I failed my way to success.
-
Friendship is the heaven of life.
-
I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
-
Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.
-
The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.
-
Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.
-
Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
-
It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.
-
Problems in human engineering will receive during the coming years the same genius and attention which the nineteenth century gave to the more material forms of engineering. We have laid good foundations for industrial prosperity, now we want to assure the happiness and growth of the workers through vocational education, vocational guidance, and wisely managed employment departments. A great field for industrial experimentation and statemanship is opening up.
-
The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.
-
A genius is a talented person who does his homework.
-
To Monsieur Eiffel the Engineer, the brave builder of so gigantic and original a specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu.
-
Absorb ideas from every source.
-
I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.
-
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.