“A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job”

“It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.”

“I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.”

“Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".”

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

“You taught me language, and my profit on't / Is, I know how to curse”

“Those that do teach young babesDo it with gentle means and easy tasks.”

“Thought and knowledge are natures in which apparatus and pretension avail nothing. Gowns, and pecuniary foundations, though of towns of gold, can never countervail the least sentence or syllable of wit. Forget this, and out American colleges will recede in their public importance whilst they grow richer every year.”

“Do not shut up the young people against their will in a pew, and force the children to ask them questions for an hour against their will.”

“The world when seen through a little child's eyes, greatly resembles paradise. Happiness is doing with a smile what you have to do anyway. This time, like all time, is a very good one if we but know what to do with it.”

“Make for the children an evening of happiness in a world of storm. Let the children have their night of fun and laughter... resolved that by our daring, these same children shall not be denied their right to live in a free and decent world.”

“Nor age so eat up my invention.”

“Ideas are the very coinage of your brain.”

“Where art thou, Muse, that thou forget'st so long / To speak of that which gives thee all thy might?”

“You speak an infinite deal of nothing.”

“They have a plentiful lack of wit.”

“Thou sodden-witted lord! thou hast no more brain than I have in mine elbows.”

“To wilful men, the injuries that they themselves procure must be their schoolmasters.”

“I hourly learn a doctrine of obedience.”

“Experience is by industry achieved, And perfected by the swift course of time.”

“Love sees with the heart and not with mind.”

“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”

“Faster than spring-time showers comes thought on thought.”

“The things taught in schools & colleges are not an education but the means of education.”

“Schools have not necessarily much to do with education...they are mainly institutions of control where certain basic habits must be inculcated in the young. Education is quite different and has little place in school.”

“How I hated schools, and what a life of anxiety I lived there. I counted the hours to the end of every term, when I should return home.”

“The breach of customIs breach of all.”

“Liberty plucks justice by the nose; The baby beats the nurse, and quite athwart Goes all decorum.”

“What is the city but the people?”

“O teach me how I should forget to think (1.1.224)”

“The learned and the studious of thought have no monopoly of wisdom. Their violence of direction in some degree disqualifies them to think truly.”

“Do not craze yourself with thinking, but go about your business anywhere.”