Alexander Graham Bell Quotes

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life. After innumerable failures I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. I was still more astounded to discover the principle I had revealed not only beneficial in the construction of a mechanical hearing aid but it served as well as means of sending the sound of the voice over a wire. Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems. What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Wherever you may find the inventor, you may give him wealth or you may take from him all that he has; and he will go on inventing. He can no more help inventing that he can help thinking or breathing. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

When one door closes another door opens; but we so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

What this power is, I cannot say ... All I know is that it exists. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

He makes you feel that if you only had a little more time, you, too, might be an inventor. ~ Helen Keller

The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The first devices to record and play back music were the phonograph and the gramophone. The gramophone's inventor: Alexander Graham Bell. ~ Marvin Ammori

One day there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA ~ Alexander Graham Bell

What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

I am honestly starting to question evolution. We went from cavemen, to homo sapiens, to this incredible society of great minds - Alexander Graham Bell inventing telephones, Steve Jobs inventing…everything. And now we're devolving. We've travelled back to cavemen, only nowadays we call them fuckboys. ~ Elle Kennedy

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

On the day he unveiled the Macintosh, a reporter from Popular Science asked Jobs what type of market research he had done. Jobs responded by scoffing, Did Alexander Graham Bell do any market research before he invented the telephone? ~ Walter Isaacson

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find something you have never seen before. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus ~ Alexander Graham Bell

It may sound ridiculous to say that Bell and his successors were the fathers of modern commercial architecture - of the skyscraper. But wait a minute. Take the Singer Building, the Flatiron Building, the Broad Exchange, the Trinity, or any of the giant office buildings. How many messages do you suppose go in and out of those buildings every day? Suppose there was no telephone and every message had to be carried by a personal messenger? How much room do you think the necessary elevators would leave for offices? Such structures would be an economic impossibility. ~ John J. Carty

When you look at the light bulb above you, you remember Thomas Alva Edison. When the telephone bell rings, you remember Alexander Graham Bell. Marie Curie was the first woman to win the Nobel Prize. When you see the blue sky, you think of Sir C.V. Raman. ~ A. P. J. Abdul Kalam

We are all too much inclined, I think, to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all round us and right at our very feet that we have never seen, because we have never really looked. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

I hate the telephone. I think the lowest circle of hell is reserved for Alexander Graham Bell. ~ Rita Mae Brown

Don't keep forever on the public road,going only where others have gone, and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. 'Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up, explore all around it; one discovery will lead to another, and before you know it you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Athletes train 15 years for 15 seconds of performance. Ask them if they got lucky. Ask an athlete how he feels after a good workout. He will tell you that he feels spent. If he doesn't feel that way, it means he hasn't worked out to his maximum ability.
Losers think life is unfair. They think only of their bad breaks. They don't consider that the person who is prepared and playing well still got the same bad breaks but overcame them. That is the difference. His threshold for tolerating pain becomes higher because in the end he is not training so much for the game but for his character. Alexander Graham Bell was desperately trying to invent a hearing aid for his partially deaf wife. He failed at inventing a hearing aid but in the process discovered the principles of the telephone. You wouldn't call someone like that lucky, would you?Good luck is when opportunity meets preparation. Without effort and preparation, lucky coincidences don't happen. ~ Shiv Khera

If you are to use Alexander Graham Bell's product, which is to say the blower, you should, in all courtesy, use it as he would have wished; and Dr Bell insisted that all phone calls should begin with the words 'Ahoy, ahoy'. Nobody knows why he insisted this – he had no connection to the navy – but insist he did and started every phone call that way. Nobody else did, and it was at the suggestion of his great rival Edison that people took to saying 'Hello'. This seems unfair. ~ Mark Forsyth

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

I have travelled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all! ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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 that has opened for us. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

Watson, ... if I can get a mechanism which will make a current of electricity vary in its intensity, as the air varies in density when a sound is passing through it, I can telegraph any sound, even the sound of speech. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

There are two critical points in every aerial flight-its beginning and its end. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

The iPhone will forever be associated with the inventive genius of Steve Jobs and Silicon Valley. But the roots of innovation can be traced back - from one genius to another, at least - back to the genius who put the phone in iPhone: Alexander Graham Bell. ~ Marvin Ammori

He had remained steadfast in agnosticism and therefore, as Mabel took comfort in remarking, 'he never denied God.' Neither did he affirm God. ~ Robert V. Bruce

I am the Alexander Graham Bell of the phone company, the Christopher Columbus of America because after 'The Twist' everything changed, .. Watch the films from 1958 up to 1959, and watch American Bandstand during that time. After the song came out, everything was different. ~ Chubby Checker

The inventor ... looks 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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

It is the man who carefully advances step by step ... who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

In order to get one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, in other words, we thought we needed the solitary genius. But if Alexander Graham Bell had fallen into the Grand River and drowned that day back in Brantford, the world would still have had the telephone, the only difference being that the telephone company would have been nicknamed Ma Gray, not Ma Bell. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions ~ Alexander Graham Bell

End of Construction. Thank you 'for your patience. Inscription on Ruth Bell Graham's grave
inspired hy a road sign she saw. ~ Billy Graham

There is more evidence that Jesus rose from the dead than there is that Julius Caesar ever lived or that Alexander the Great died at the age of thirty-three. ~ Billy Graham

I read a lot of graphic novels - some of my favorites graphic novelists or artists are Rebecca Kraatz, Gabrielle Bell, Graham Roumieu, Tom Gauld, and Renee French. ~ Matthea Harvey

When he takes a penalty, Graham Alexander turns his foot into a spatula-type device ~ Mike Parry

Never walk on the traveled path because it only leads where others have been. ~ Graham Bell

Someone said that thirty was a significant birthday, and everyone around the table agreed. Someone else said it was the first time you heard the bell.
What bell? someone asked.
But they all knew what bell. It was like you'd already completed a few laps, observed another, but this was the first time you'd properly heard the bell. There had been one at seven, but you hadn't heard it because you were so young; and then one at fourteen but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy looking over your shoulder; then another at twenty-one but you hadn't heard it because you were too busy talking; and then one at twenty-eight which for some reason took two years before you heard it. But they all agreed you did hear that one, eventually.
Your lousy career, said one guest. Babies, said one of the women. Lovers, friends, travel, said another. Parents aging. Bong. All the things you hadn't done. Might not do. Bong. ~ Graham Joyce

Innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm. ~ Graham Greene

If I cannot give my children a perfect mother I can at least give them more of the one they've got
and make that one more loving. I will be available. I will take time to listen, time to play, time to be home when they arrive from school, time to counsel and encouerage. ~ Ruth Bell Graham

Dad, I'm not at all sure I can follow you any longer in your simple Christian faith' stated the clergyman's son when he returned from the university for holidays with a fledgling scholar's
assured arrogance. The father's black eyes skewered his son, who was 'lost,' as C.S. Lewis put it
'in the invincible ignorance of his intellect.' 'Son,' the father said, 'That is your freedom, your
terrible freedom. ~ Ruth Bell Graham

I read many years ago that Billy Graham's wife, Ruth, was asked, "How is your marriage so successful?" She replied, "Because he plays golf, and I play bridge." Ruth Bell Graham understood the value of outside sources of life for a marriage to flourish. ~ Henry Cloud

It is often said that the earth belongs to the race, as if raw land was a boon, or gift. ~ William Graham Sumner

To say it was a dark and stormy night would be a gross understatement. It was colder than witch's kiss, wetter than a spring swamp, and blacker than a tax collector's heart. A sane man would have been curled up in front of a fire with a cup of mulled wine and a good boo-, ah, a willing wench. ~ Hilari Bell

When they answered the bell on that wild winter night. There was no one expected - and no one in sight. ~ Edward Gorey

Believe that Christ died for you. He suffered for you. He won the battle over sin for you. He rose from the grave and was victorious over death so that you can live forever. ~ Billy Graham

Imagine how much easier it would be for us to learn how to love if we began with a shared definition. ~ Bell Hooks

Ring the alarum-bell! Blow, wind! come, wrack!
At least we'll die with harness on our back. ~ William Shakespeare

Sometimes I feel so helpless and inadequate, and wonder if I have done enough to make the Gospel clear. But I also know that only the Holy Spirit can open others' eyes to the truth. ~ Billy Graham

Each quantum event, each of the trillions of times reality's particles interact with each other every instant, is like a note that rings and resonates throughout the great bell of creation. And the sound of the ringing propagates instantaneously, everywhere at once, interconnecting all things. This is a truth of our universe. It is a mystical truth, that reality at its deepest level is an undivided wholeness.

~ David Zindell ~ David Zindell

Youth was so mercilessly hard in its decisions; it had its own unyielding standards and had not yet learned enough to know that time would prove them arbitrary. ~ Winston Graham

Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right. ~ Derrick A. Bell

We find what we are looking for in life, her father had once said to her, which was true
if you look for happiness, you will see it; if you look for distrust and envy and hatred
all those things
you will find those too. ~ Alexander McCall Smith

Do others see something of Christ in your life? Do they see a "family resemblance" to Him by the way you live? ~ Billy Graham

Old men, for the most part, are like old chronicles that give you dull but true accounts of times past, and are worth knowing only on that score. ~ Alexander Pope

You know, every year has been fantastic for me, I'm still here, I'm still alive and it's been fantastic. ~ Graham Nash

The body is your instrument in dance, but your art is outside that creature, the body. ~ Martha Graham

Epistle to Miss Blount, On Her Leaving the Town, After the Coronation"

As some fond virgin, whom her mother's care
Drags from the town to wholesome country air,
Just when she learns to roll a melting eye,
And hear a spark, yet think no danger nigh;
From the dear man unwillingly she must sever,
Yet takes one kiss before she parts for ever:
Thus from the world fair Zephalinda flew,
Saw others happy, and with sighs withdrew;
Not that their pleasures caused her discontent,
She sighed not that They stayed, but that She went.
She went, to plain-work, and to purling brooks,
Old-fashioned halls, dull aunts, and croaking rooks,
She went from Opera, park, assembly, play,
To morning walks, and prayers three hours a day;
To pass her time 'twixt reading and Bohea,
To muse, and spill her solitary tea,
Or o'er cold coffee trifle with the spoon,
Count the slow clock, and dine exact at noon;
Divert her eyes with pictures in the fire,
Hum half a tune, tell stories to the squire;
Up to her godly garret after seven,
There starve and pray, for that's the way to heaven.
Some Squire, perhaps, you take a delight to rack;
Whose game is Whisk, whose treat a toast in sack,
Who visits with a gun, presents you birds,
Then gives a smacking buss, and cries – No words!
Or with his hound comes hollowing from the stable,
Makes love with nods, and knees beneath a t ~ Alexander Pope

And whenever you encounter a problem, no matter how insurmountable it might seem, there is one simple response that should be ingrained in your behavior: Never give up. ~ Stedman Graham

I just try to take the best opportunities that I can get. ~ Heather Graham

I thought I am kissing pain and pain belongs to You as happiness never does. I love You in Your pain. I could almost taste metal and salt in the skin, and I thought, How good you are. You might have killed us with happiness, but You let us be with You in pain. ~ Graham Greene

The good must merit God's peculiar care; But who but God can tell us who they are? ~ Alexander Pope

I was lying!"
"Why did you have to choose that moment to do it so well?"
"Because I had to make you believe me! Because I couldn't let you give up your life for me!"
"You are so annoyingly noble." She sniffed. "It took me far too long to realize it was all an act.One I should make you pay dearly for.You humiliated me in front of those very nice people."
"Those very nice people you actively deceived," he said pointedly. "Besides, you hit me. Excessively hard,I might add."
"Not nearly hard enough," she snapped.
"Perhaps you can have your captain shoot me?"
"Do not for a moment think he did not offer," she said loftily. "And do not think for a moment I did not seriously consider it.Dimitri was quite disappointed when I forbade him to kill you."
"I should be grateful for that much, then. ~ Victoria Alexander

Most people are one car wreck away from needing somebody's help. So, I don't take anything for granted much anymore. ~ Lindsey Graham

In this, our age of infamy Man's choice is but to be A tyrant, traitor, prisoner: No other choice has he. ~ Alexander Pushkin

That night was the first time I understood the covering. The covering is the fire. It is the strength, courage, and power Yahweh equips us with. It girds a man's loins when he needs it and lets a man know that Yahweh forgives him when he fails. It snaps our legs when we need it. It speaks Yahweh's wise counsel ... It comes only from Yahweh, who alone is the shepherd that we need. ~ Cliff Graham