Thomas A. Edison Quotes

“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!”

“I get my ideas from listening from within.”

“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.”

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

“There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.”

“Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.”

“They were not failures, they were new found ways of what does not work"I can accept failure,everyonefails at something. But I can't accept not trying”

“The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.”

“Problems in human engineering will receive during the coming years the same genius and attention which the nineteenth century gave to the more material forms of engineering.We have laid good foundations for industrial prosperity, now we want to assure the happiness and growth of the workers through vocational education, vocational guidance, and wisely managed employment departments. A great field for industrial experimentation and statemanship is opening up.”

“I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting...not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.”

“Success depends on how many experiments you can fit into 24 hours”

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

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

“To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.”

“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.”

“I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.”

“No, I haven't failed thousands of times. On the contrary, I have successfully eliminated thousands of ideas that do not work!”

“I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.”

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

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

“I've realized that most of my best ideas have followed a good night's sleep.”

“The value of a good idea is in using it.”