Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
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Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself.
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When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has opened for us.
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Observe, Remember, Compare.
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The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.
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What this power is, I cannot say... All I know is that it exists.
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Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
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You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.
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Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
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Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years.
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If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed.
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Perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums.
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I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! … I have been able to hear a shadow, and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disk.
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There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.
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Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
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A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself.
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It is the man who carefully advances step by step...who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.
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The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.
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Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.
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The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter.
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Grand telegraphic discovery today … Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time ... With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish … the “timbre” of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli.
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The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent.
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Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions.
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I begin my work at about nine or ten o'clock in the evening and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.
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The great advantage the telephone possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus consists in the fact that it requires no skill to operate the instrument.