Thomas A. Edison Quotes

“The inventor can't do it all, you've got to change people. We have an enormous capacity to invent super-machinery. But our desire to install the device is weak. Human inertia is the problem, not invention. Something in man makes him resist change.”

“The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness... Unfortunately, many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up. I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing.”

“Books will soon be obsolete in the schools... Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.”

“What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.”

“I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of.”

“People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest.”

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”

“Seeming to do is not doing.”

“I would construct and work along various lines until I found them untenable. When one theory was discarded, I developed another at once. I realized very early that this was the only possible way for me to work out all the problems.”

“When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”

“Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.”

“When there's no experimenting there's no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward. If anything goes wrong, experiment until you get to the very bottom of the trouble.”

“I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It's their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor”

“There is much more opportunity than there are people to see it.”

“Show me a completely contented person and I'll show you a failure.”

“Two per cent. is genius, and ninety-eight per cent. is hard work.”

“The First 40 hours of work per week are for survival. Everything after that is for success.”

“Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.”

“My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected - ideas of others.”

“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”

“My mother was the making of me.”

“The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.”

“The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.”

“Genius defined: of inspiration 1% percent, of perspiration, 99%.”

“The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.”