Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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The only thing I use my body for is to carry my brain around.
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We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. ... 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.
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When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.
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I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.
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The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.
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Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!
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Fish seem to be rather conservative around this bay, one seldom catches enough to form the fundamental basis for a lie. Dante left out one of the torments of Hades I could imagine a doomed mortal made to untangle wet fish lines forever. Everybody lost patience at the stupidity of the fish in not coming forward promptly to be murdered.
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I have not failed. I have successfully discovered 1200 ideas that don't work.
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We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.
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There's a way to do it better - find it.
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Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.
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I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of.
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I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph.
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I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'
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To those searching for truth -- not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction -- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
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My mother was the making of me.
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Because I readily absorb ideas from every source - frequently starting where the last person left off - I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
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The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
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I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.
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The secret of success is focus of purpose.
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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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Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something.
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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.".