Thomas Edison Quotes

Imagine if Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein were all alive 10, 20, 30 years before we know them to be alive; it would have advanced the world that much sooner. ~ Marc Guggenheim

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. - Thomas Edison ~ Greg Crabtree

I have not failed; I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work. -Thomas Edison
I like this attitude ... ~ Davee Jones

If Thomas Edison had gone to business school, we would all be reading by larger candles. ~ Mark McCormack

Modern electrical power distribution technology is largely the fruit of the labors of two men - Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla. Compared with Edison, Tesla is relatively unknown, yet he invented the alternating electric current generation and distribution system that supplanted Edison's direct current technology and that is the system currently in use today. Tesla also had a vision of delivering electricity to the world that was revolutionary and unique. If his research had come to fruition, the technological landscape would be entirely different than it is today. Power lines and the insulated towers that carry them over thousands of country and city miles would not distract our view. Tesla believed that by using the electrical potential of the Earth, it would be possible to transmit electricity through the Earth and the atmosphere without using wires. With suitable receiving devices, the electricity could be used in remote parts of the planet. Along with the transmission of electricity, Tesla proposed a system of global communication, following an inspired realization that, to electricity, the Earth was nothing more than a small, round metal ball.
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With $150,000 in financial support from J. Pierpont Morgan and other backers, Tesla built a radio transmission tower at Wardenclyffe, Long Island, that promised - along with other less widely popular benefits - to provide communication to people in the far corners of the world who needed no more than a handheld rece ~ Christopher Dunn

I consider myself an inventor first and an entrepreneur second. In real life, my hero is Thomas Edison. He was a great inventor, but also an outstanding entrepreneur who was able to sell his inventions to the masses. He didn't just develop the light bulb; he invented the entire electric grid and power distribution system. ~ Aaron Patzer

[In any] machine, the failure of one part to cooperate properly with the other part disorganizes the whole and renders it inoperative for the purpose intended. - THOMAS EDISON R ~ Graham Moore

I have not failed. I have just found 10,000 ways it will NOT work. ~ Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison held 1,093 patents. He was a great believer in exercising his mind and the minds of his workers and felt that without a quota he probably wouldn't have achieved very much. His personal invention quota was a minor invention every ten days and a major invention every six months. To Edison, an idea quota was the difference between eating beefsteak or a plateful of Black Beauty stew. ~ Michael Michalko

a tongue has no bones but it is strong enough to break the heart so be carefull about ur words ~ Irina Swart

My first hero was Thomas Edison, whose adult life had consisted entirely of free time. ~ Jonathan Franzen

His [Thomas Edison] method was inefficient in the extreme, for an immense ground had to be covered to get anything at all unless blind chance intervened and, at first, I was almost a sorry witness of his doings, knowing that just a little theory and calculation would have saved him 90 per cent of the labor. But he had a veritable contempt for book learning and mathematical knowledge, trusting himself entirely to his inventor's instinct and practical American sense. In view of this, the truly prodigious amount of his actual accomplishments is little short of a miracle. ~ Nikola Tesla

To me, Arnold was a pioneer in the spirit of Thomas Edison or Benjamin Franklin, while Tiger is a pioneer in the spirit of Bill Gates. ~ Mark McCormack

What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years. ~ Stephen Leacock

Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Albert Einstein didn't speak until he was four years old and was considered not very bright. Oprah Winfrey was demoted from a news anchor job because she was thought to be unfit for television. Walt Disney was fired from a newspaper for lacking imagination. Thomas Edison was called stupid by his teachers. The Beatles were told they didn't have a great sound and rejected by Decca Recording Studios. Dr. Suess was rejected by twenty-seven publishers. Abraham Lincoln had a long list of failures, including eight election losses and a nervous breakdown. ~ Tim Suttle

Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I've stolen a lot myself. But I know how to steal ~ Thomas Edison

When we set about accounting for a Napoleon or a Shakespeare or a Raphael or a Wagner or an Edison or other extraordinary person, we understand that the measure of his talent will not explain the whole result, nor even the largest part of it; no, it is the atmosphere in which the talent was cradled that explains; it is the training it received while it grew, the nurture it got from reading, study, example, the encouragement it gathered from self-recognition and recognition from the outside at each stage of its development: when we know all these details, then we know why the man was ready when his opportunity came. ~ Mark Twain

It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today. ~ Benjamin Carson

We owe a lot to Thomas Edison-if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight. ~ Milton Berle

I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson. I thought Pele sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important. ~ Pele

Well," he said, quite seriously, "it's this way: you work because you're afraid not to. You work becuase you have to drive yourself to such a fury to begin. That part's just plain hell! It's so hard to get started that once you do you're afraid of slipping back. You'd rather do anything than go through all that agony again--so you keep going--you keep going faster all the time--you keep going till you couldn't stop even if you wanted to. You forget to eat, to shave, to put on a clean shirt when you have one. You almost forget to sleep, and when you do try to you can't--because the avalanche has started, and it keeps going night and day. And people say: 'Why don't you stop sometime? Why don't you forget about it now and then? Why don't you take a few days off?' And you don't do it because you can't--you can't stop yourself--and even if you could you'd be afraid to because there'd be all that hell to go through getting started up again. Then people say you're a glutton for work, but it isn't so. It's laziness--just plain, damned, simple laziness, that's all...Napoleon--and--and Balzac--and Thomas Edison--these fellows who never sleep more than an hour or two at a time, and can keep going night and day--why that's not because they love to work! It's because they're really lazy--and afraid not to work because they know they're lazy! Why, hell yes!..I'll bet you anything you like if you could really find out what's going on in old Edison's mind, you'd find that he wished he could ~ Thomas Wolfe

Faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope. Thomas Edison, American inventor ~ George Washington

One of my other nicknames was Thomas Edison, because I invented so many moves. ~ Earl Monroe

would first meet Thomas Edison, Paul watched a man burn ~ Graham Moore

Tinkerers built America. Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, all were tinkerers in their childhood. Everything from the airplane to the computer started in somebody's garage. Go back even further: the Industrial Revolution was a revolution of tinkerers. The great scientific thinkers of eighteenth-century England couldn't have been less interested in cotton spinning and weaving. Why would you be? It was left to a bloke on the shop floor who happened to glance at a one-thread wheel that had toppled over and noticed that both the wheel and the spindle were still turning. So James Hargreaves invented the spinning jenny, and there followed other artful gins and mules and frames and looms, and Britain and the world were transformed. By tinkerers rather than thinkerers. "Technological change came from tinkerers," wrote Professor J.R. McNeill of Georgetown, "people with little or no scientific education but with plenty of hands-on experience." John Ratzenberger likes to paraphrase a Stanford University study: "Engineers who are great in physics and calculus but can't think in new ways about old objects are doomed to think in old ways about new objects." That's the lesson of the spinning jenny: an old object fell over and someone looked at it in a new way. ~ Mark Steyn

They gave Saint Patrick his own day and what did he do but run out a bunch of snakes. Why, Thomas Edison lit up the world. If it hadn't been for him we'd all still be sitting here in the dark, with nothing but a candle, ~ Fannie Flagg

What made Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Edison, and Albert Einstein such creative geniuses? It wasn't reading books or watching YouTube talks about How To Be More Creative, that's for sure ... If startling insights could be systematically arrived at, they wouldn't be startling. The best you can do is to create a conducive environment: put in the hours; take time to daydream; avoid mind-corroding substances. ~ Oliver Burkeman

In 1914, Thomas Edison, at age sixty-seven, lost his factory to fire. It had very little insurance. No longer a young man, Edison watched his lifetime effort go up in smoke and said, "There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burnt up. Thank God we can start anew." In spite of disaster, three weeks later, he invented the phonograph. What an attitude! ~ Shiv Khera

As a writer, politician, scientist, and businessman, [Ben] Franklin had few equals among the educated of his day-though he left school at ten. ( ... )Boys like Andrew Carnegie who begged his mother not to send him to school and was well on his way to immortality and fortune at the age of thirteen, would be referred today for psychological counseling; Thomas Edison would find himself in Special Ed until his peculiar genius had been sufficiently tamed. ~ John Taylor Gatto

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense. ~ Thomas A. Edison

I've always said Thomas Edison invented the movie camera to show people killing and kissing. ~ Quentin Tarantino

Without doubt, Thomas Edison is my greatest contemporary. ~ Henry Ford

Americans understand that one of our great national strengths is innovation. Great innovators - Benjamin Franklin, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and others - are household names. ~ Robert Hormats

The recurrence of a phenomenon like [Thomas] Edison is not very likely. The profound change of conditions and the ever increasing necessity of theoretical training would seem to make it impossible. He will occupy a unique and exalted position in the history of his native land, which might well be proud of his great genius and undying achievements in the interest of humanity. ~ Nikola Tesla

Yes, my grandfather worked with Thomas Edison on the electric car, and he sold electric cars at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris. ~ Al Jardine

The greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison Edison's first major invention, in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented. ~ Dave Barry

If you want to succeed, get some enemies. ~ Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison reads not for entertainment but to increase his store of knowledge. He sucks in information as eagerly as the bee sucks honey from flowers. The whole world, so to speak, pours its wisdom into his mind. He regards it as a criminal waste of time to go through the slow and painful ordeal of ascertaining things for one's self if these same things have already been ascertained and made available by others. In Edison's mind knowledge is power. ~ B.C. Forbes

Henry Ford believed the soul of a person is located in their last breath and so captured the last breath of his best friend Thomas Edison in a test tube and kept it evermore. It is on display at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, like Galileo's finger in the church of Santa Croce, but Edison's last breath is an invisible relic. ~ Elizabeth Alexander

Thomas Edison was not, Paul thought, the first man to become rich by inventing something clever. Rather, he was the first man to build a factory for harnessing cleverness. ~ Graham Moore

I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work. ~ Nikola Tesla

One day a partially deaf four years old child came home with a note in his pocket from his teacher, "Your Tommy is too stupid to learn, get him out of school." His mother read the note and answered, "My Tommy is not too stupid to learn, I will teach him myself." And that Tommy grew up to be the great Thomas Edison. Thomas Edison had only three months of formal schooling. ~ Shiv Khera

If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as, 'Candle-making industry threatened'. ~ Newt Gingrich

If we did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves." - Thomas Edison ~ Brian P. Moran

Without deposit banking modern economies would be impossible. Banks are not only a means of safeguarding money, but also a method of maintaining a constant and energetic flow of capital within a complex economy. Without deposit banking money that is saved is hidden away and removed from the economy - it does nothing except preserve its original worth. Deposit banking, however, allows saved money to be loaned and invested, thereby producing more wealth. ~ Thomas F. Madden

Nonexistence never hurt anyone. Existence hurts everyone. ~ Thomas Ligotti

If an eighty-six-year-old woman has been clear-seeing from a young age, she will have gone through a lot of life developing a keen eye for snares and pitfalls, an ear for deceit, and a good nose for knavery. And by such an age, a smart woman with no illusions is one to whom courage comes far more readily than it does to those young people who don't yet know the world for what it is. ~ Dean Koontz

Natural rights are those which appertain to man in right of his existence. Of this kind are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind, and also all those rights of acting as an individual for his own comfort and happiness, which are not injurious to the natural rights of others. Civil rights are those which appertain to man in right of his being a member of society. Every civil right has for its foundation some natural right pre-existing in the individual, but to the enjoyment of which his individual power is not, in all cases, sufficiently competent. Of this kind are all those which relate to security and protection. ~ Thomas Paine

Love is the stepping stone to new beginnings. ~ Thomas Kinkade

If you're not yet wealthy but want to be someday, never purchase a home that requires a mortgage that is more than twice your household's total annual realized income. ~ Thomas J. Stanley

Against us are all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Secrets can actually be quite important. A work of art that reveals its meaning or its power too quickly is uninteresting. It might not even be a good work of art. ~ Thomas Koerfer

You can't do science in a novel, but you can do philosophy. Or, if you're really lucky, you can manage to pose a question in such a way that other people will take it on. ~ Scarlett Thomas

He thinks of making his fortune. We all know that money sticks to yours hands.
No, It passes through them, alas. ~ Hilary Mantel

Let us respect others no one lives alone in a city, a nation, or a world. ~ Thomas S. Monson

You must not suppose that I would like you to profess religion without possessing it. A hypocrite is in my opinion one of the most detestable of beings. my opinion is, that every one should honestly and carefully investigate the Bible; and if he can believe it to be the word of God, to follow its teachings. - Brevet Major Thomas J. Jackson (1 March 1851) ~ James I. Robertson, Jr.

What a way Oak had, she thought, of enduring things. Boldwood, who seemed so much deeper and higher and stronger in feeling than Gabriel, had not yet learnt, any more than she herself, the simple lesson which Oak showed a mastery of by every turn and look he gave - that among the multitude of interests by which he was surrounded, those which affected his personal well-being were not the most absorbing and important in his eyes. Oak meditatively looked upon the horizon of circumstances without any special regard to his own standpoint in the midst. That was how she would wish to be ~ Thomas Hardy

There is a condition worse than blindness, and that is seeing something that isn't there. THOMAS HARDY ~ Erin Kelly

Because of their enmity you will be left alone. They will cast you out and forsake you. ~ Thomas Merton

The biggest hypocrites on gun control are those who live in upscale developments with armed security guards - and who want to keep other people from having guns to defend themselves. But what about lower-income people living in high-crime, inner city neighborhoods? Should such people be kept unarmed and helpless, so that limousine liberals can 'make a statement' by adding to the thousands of gun laws already on the books? ~ Thomas Sowell

Endurance is patience concentrated. ~ Thomas Carlyle

By reason of gifts and bribes the offices be given to rich men, which should rather have been executed by wise men. ~ Thomas More

And wit's the noblest frailty of the mind. ~ Thomas Shadwell

A solitary, unused to speaking of what he sees and feels, has mental experiences which are at once more intense and less articulate than those of a gregarious man. ~ Thomas Mann

When people get tired they will say, "Enough is enough. If you want to kill us all, you can kill us all." ~ Thomas Mapfumo

I have but one system of ethics for men and for nations - to be grateful, to be faithful to all engagements under all circumstances, to be open and generous, promoting in the long run even the interests of both ~ Thomas Jefferson

There's nothing I want to relive - certainly not youth - and as for what's to come, I'm in no hurry. I watch my dogs. They throw themselves into everything they do; even their sleeping is wholehearted. They aren't waiting for a better tomorrow, or looking back at their glory days. Following their example, I'm trying to stick to the present. I'm not stranded here, I know where I've been; I can conjure up details of old haunts, even former states of mind. ~ Abigail Thomas

Ignorance is of a peculiar nature; once dispelled, it is impossible to reestablish it. It is not originally a thing of itself, but is only the absence of knowledge; and though man may be kept ignorant, he cannot be made ignorant. ~ Thomas Paine

The moment we give into temptation, Satan immediately changes his strategy and becomes the accuser. Thomas Brooks ~ Thomas Brooks

Each time I had an internship to do or an essay to write, I would always do it in the field of cinema. Nobody in my family worked in film and nobody could understand it. ~ Thomas Bidegain

Democracy as a system has evolved into something that Thomas Jefferson didn't anticipate. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

To be successful is never convenient. The things you have to go through, it's never convenient. ~ Eric Thomas

Why - what the name - began her father. I thought you went out to get the parsley! ~ Thomas Hardy

The ability to have our own way, and at the same time convince others they are having their own way, is a rare thing among men. Among women it is as common as eyebrows. ~ Thomas Bailey Aldrich

But precisely this illusion that everything is "clear" is what is blinding us all. It is a serious temptation, and it is a subtle form of pride and worldly love of power and revenge. ~ Thomas Merton

Don't you get tired of seeing so many "non-conformists" with the same non-conformist look? ~ Thomas Sowell

Trust not to friends and kindred, neither do thou put off the care of thy soul's welfare til hereafter; for men will sooner forget thee than thou art aware of. ~ Thomas A Kempis

Before his Becoming, he would not have dared any of this. Now he realized he could do anything. Anything. Anything. ~ Thomas Harris

I know thou art gone to the home of thy rest
Then why should my soul be so sad?
I know thou art gone where the weary are blest,
And the mourner looks up, and is glad;
I know thou hast drank of the Lethe that flows
In a land where they do not forget,
That sheds over memory only repose,
And takes from it only regret. ~ Thomas Kibble Hervey

She had lost just too much control, time was rushing all around her, these were rapids, and as far ahead as she could see it looked like Brock's stretch of the river, another stage, like sex, children, surgery, further into adulthood perilous and real, into the secret that life is soldiering, that soldiering includes death, those those soldiered for, not yet and often never in on the secret, are always, at every age, children. ~ Thomas Pynchon

Nakedness, hunger, distress of all kinds, death itself have been cheerfully suffered, when the heart was right. It is the feeling of injustice that is insupportable to all men. ~ Thomas Carlyle

Claiming my right to follow whethersoever science should lead ... it is as respectable to be modified monkey as modified dirt. ~ Thomas Huxley

I firmly believe in luck. And I noticed: the more I work, the luckier I become. ~ Thomas Jefferson

It won't be disagreeable," he said. "It can be made quite enjoyable."
"Oh, it had better be," she said tartly. "I've heard plenty over the years on your amatory prowess. If I'm not on the roof crowing, I will consider myself disappointed. ~ Sherry Thomas

They waited for the elevator. " Most people love butterflies and hate moth," he said. "But moths are more interesting - more engaging."
"They're destructive."
"Some are, a lot are, but they live in all kinds of ways. Just like we do." Silence for one floor.
"There's a moth, more than one in fact, that lives only on tears," he offered. "That's all they eat or drink."
"What kind of tears? Whose tears?"
"The tears of large land mammals, about our size.
The old definition of moth was, 'anything that gradually, silently eats, consumes, or wages any other thing.'
It was a verb for destruction too ... ~ Thomas Harris

Therefore I must say that, as I hope for mercy, I can have no other notion of all the other governments that I see or know, than that they are a conspiracy of the rich, who, on pretence of managing the public, only pursue their private ends, and devise all the ways and arts they can find out; ~ Thomas More

It is not only vain, but wicked, in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them. ~ Thomas Jefferson

Try as some of us may, we cannot escape the influence our lives have upon the lives of others. Ours is the opportunity to build, to lift, to inspire, and indeed to lead. The New Testament teaches that it is impossible to take a right attitude toward Christ without taking an unselfish attitude toward men: 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me' (Matthew 25:40). We may think as we please, but there is no question about what the Bible teaches. ~ Thomas S. Monson

What created democracy was Thomas Paine and Shays' Rebellion, the suffragists and the abolitionists and on down through the populists and the labor movement, including the Wobblies. Tough, in your face people ... Mother Jones, Woody Guthrie ... Martin Luther King and Caesar Chavez. And now it's down to us. ~ Jim Hightower

Everyone seems to agree that it is Minnesotans' responsibility to assimilate to Somali culture, not the other way around.11 The Catholic University of St. Thomas has installed Islamic prayer rooms and footbaths in order to demonstrate, according to Dean of Students Karen Lange, that the school is "diverse." Minneapolis's mayor, Betsy Hodges, has shown up wearing a full hijab to meetings with Somalis. (In fairness, it was "Forbid Your Daughter to Work Outside the Home" Day.) ~ Ann Coulter

Even with the intention to be quiet, human beings seldom can restrain from comment or at least grumbled cursing; we are the chattering species, as much as we are anything else - Odd Thomas - Odd Apocalypse by Dean Koontz pg 56 chapter 7 ~ Dean Koontz