Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours - and thrived on it.
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I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.
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I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.
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I would construct and work along various lines until I found them untenable. When one theory was discarded, I developed another at once. I realized very early that this was the only possible way for me to work out all the problems.
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Great ideas originate in the muscles.
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Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation - rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.
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Sticking to it is the genius.
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The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
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All bibles are man-made.
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What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.
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I was at the foot of my class.
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What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.
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It has been just so in all my inventions. The first step is an intuition-and comes with a burst, then difficulties arise. This thing that gives out and then that-"Bugs"as such little faults and difficulties are called show themselves and months of anxious watching, study and labor are requisite before commercial success-or failure-is certainly reached.
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Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition.
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The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them.
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None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
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So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake ... Religion is all bunk.
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Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.
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Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose.
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I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.
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Today, I am wondering what would have happened to me by now, if, fifty years ago, some fluent talker had converted me to the theory of the eight-hour day and convinced me that it was not fair to my fellow-workers to put forth my best efforts in my work? I am glad that the eight-hour day had not been invented when I was a young man. If my life had been made up of eight-hour days, I don't believe I could have accomplished a great deal.
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The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.
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The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus.
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Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.