Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.
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I told [Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted "Mary had a little lamb," etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. On first words spoken on a phonograph.
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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 never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.
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I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'
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I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.
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The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do.
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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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Show me a thoroughly satisfied man - and I will show you a failure.
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If there is a better solution... find it.
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I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.
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I never once made a discovery ... I speak without exaggeration that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light ... Yet in only two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.
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Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
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In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.
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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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Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
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I have not failed. I have successfully discovered 1200 ideas that don't work.
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Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.
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Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
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Accomplishing something provides the only real satisfaction in life.
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Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!
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What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.
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The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.
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After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldnt be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way.