Thomas A. Edison Quotes

“Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.”

“I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure”

“Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking around laboratory tables all day. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.”

“Never Say I Failed 99 Times, Say I Discovered 99 Ways Which Causes Failure!”

“We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.”

“Because I readily absorb ideas from every source - frequently starting where the last person left off - I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.”

“I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.”

“Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.”

“The stomach is the only part of man which can be fully satisfied. The yearning of man's brain for new knowledge and experience and for more pleasant and comfortable surroundings never can be completely met. It is an appetite which cannot be appeased.”

“The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.”

“I never once made a discovery ... I speak without exaggeration that I have constructed three thousand different theories in connection with the electric light ... Yet in only two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory.”

“The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast”

“We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.”

“If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.”

“There's a way to do it better - find it.”

“Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.”

“I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”

“I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.”

“Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.”

“Let the public throw bouquets to the inventors and in time we will all be happy.”

“I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.”

“Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I've stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don't know how to steal!”

“I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

“I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'”