Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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There is much more opportunity than there are people to see it.
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Great ideas originate in the muscles.
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I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
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If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.
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Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don’t Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can’t Decide My Future.
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Any large extension of the Government into business affairs - no matter what the pretense and no matter how the the extension is labeled - will be bound to promote waste and put a curb on our prosperity and progress.
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A reporter called on Edison to interview him about a substitute for lead in the manufacture of storage batteries that the scientist was seeking. Edison informed the man that he had made 20,000 experiments but none had worked. "Aren't you discouraged by all this waste of effort?" the reporter asked. Edison: "Waste! There's nothing wasted. I have discovered 20,000 things that won'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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Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music.
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Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!
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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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The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.
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Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
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Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
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I have better use for my brain than to poison it with alcohol. To put alcohol in the human brain is like putting sand in the bearings of an engine.
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Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
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Friendship is the heaven of life.
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I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.
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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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The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus.
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Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.
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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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The secret of success is focus of purpose.
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I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.