“We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.”

“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.”

“Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong!”

“In creating technology for ourselves we created it for the world.”

“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.”

“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?”