Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.
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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.
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Absorb ideas from every source.
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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
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I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.
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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.
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I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.
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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.
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Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
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I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
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Large portions of life's disappointments are individuals who did not understand that they were so near achievement when they surrendered.
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There is no substitute for hard work.
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Nineteen hundred and three will bring great advances in surgery, in the study of bacteria, in the knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease. Medicine is played out. Every new discovery of bacteria shows us all the more convincingly that we have been wrong and that the million tons of stuff we have taken was all useless.
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A genius is a talented person who does his homework.
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Success is the result of hard work.
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Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people.
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I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.
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I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.
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I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.
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The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if on will only take the pains to train the mind to think.
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Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.
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Baseball is the greatest of American games. Some say football, but it is my firm belief, and it shall always be, that baseball has no superior.
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The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
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Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".