Thomas A. Edison Quotes

I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.

Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.

No Such Thing as Bad Results

I do not believe any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.

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.

Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! ...
I've failed my way to success.

Two per cent. is genius, and ninety-eight per cent. is hard work.

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.

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.

It is very different to make a practical system and to introduce it. A few experiments in the laboratory would prove the practicability of system long before it could be brought into general use. You can take a pipe and put a little coal in it, close it up, heat it and light the gas that comes out of the stem, but that is not introducing gas lighting. I'll bet that if it were discovered to-morrow in New York that gas could be made out of coal it would be at least five years before the system would be in general use.

Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.

Nature made us ... nature did it all ... not the gods of the religions.

My main purpose in life is to make money so I can afford to go on creating more inventions ...

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

Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy.

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do.

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.

Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous ... it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe.

A lawsuit is the suicide of time.

To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity.

Interest is the invention of Satan.

During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem.

I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.

Each time you fail, you have eliminated another wrong option.

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.

I am so deaf I am debarred from hearing all the time articulation and have to depend on the judgment of others.

The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.

Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.

As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.

Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.

I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.

The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization ... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation

What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.

An idea is something that won't work unless you do.

A genius is a talented person who does his homework.

The First 40 hours of work per week are for survival. Everything after that is for success.

Baseball is the greatest of American games. Some say football, but it is my firm belief, and it shall always be, that baseball has no superior.

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."

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.

I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.

There is a better way to do it - Find it!

Work while others are wishing.

Be courageous! Have faith! Go forward.

Genius defined: of inspiration 1% percent, of perspiration, 99%.

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

Absorb ideas from every source.

The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident ... Almost none of my inventions came about totally by accident. They were achieved by having trained myself to endure and tolerate hard work.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.

What you are will show in what you do.

The value of a good idea is in using it.

Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!

Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.

The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck.

I start where the last man left off. What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve.

I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles
can be developed, if on will only take the pains to train
the mind to think.

My mother was the making of me.

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.

Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don't work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they'll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they'll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they've got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.

First be sure a thing is wanted or needed, then go ahead.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.

Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it.

I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.

You can't realize your dreams unless you have one to begin with.

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.

Religion is all bunk.

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing ...

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions ... . The dove is my emblem ... . I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it ... . I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill ... .

The man who doesn't make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition.

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.

There is no subsitute for hard work.

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.

The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen. Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future.

Failure is the most effective technique to optimize strategic planning, implementation and processes.

My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it.

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.

Restlessness is discontent - and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man - and I will show you a failure.

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.

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.

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

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.

Youth doesn't take advice.

Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear.

Sticking to it is the genius.

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.