Thomas A. Edison Quotes
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Consider data without prejudice.
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I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
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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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Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don’t Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can’t Decide My Future.
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I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.
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My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected - ideas of others.
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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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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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In creating technology for ourselves we created it for the world.
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The roots of tobacco plants must go clear through to hell. Satan's principal agent Dyspepsia must have charge of this branch of the vegetable kingdom.
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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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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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The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.
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There is always a better way.
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Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.
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That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt. Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 - that is what it amounts to, with interest.
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Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability.... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation.
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From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
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I am afraid of radium and polonium ... I don't want to monkey with them.
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I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.
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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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Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.
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Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me – the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love – He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us – nature did it all – not the gods of the religions.
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His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.