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After We Had Conducted Thousands Of Experiments On A Certain Project Without Solving The Problem, One Of My Associates, After We Had Conducted The Crowning Experiment And It Had Proved A Failure, Expressed Discouragement And Disgust Over Our Having Failed To Find Out Anything. I Cheerily Assured Him That We Had Learned Something. For We Had Learned For A Certainty That The Thing Couldnt Be Done That Way, And That We Would Have To Try Some Other Way.

-Thomas A. Edison

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After We Had Conducted

Thomas A. Edison

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After We Had Conducted Thousands Of Experiments On A Certain Project Without Solving The Problem, One Of My Associates, After We Had Conducted The Crowning Experiment And It Had Proved A Failure, Expressed Discouragement And Disgust Over Our Having Failed To Find Out Anything. I Cheerily Assured Him That We Had Learned Something. For We Had Learned For A Certainty That The Thing Couldnt Be Done That Way, And That We Would Have To Try Some Other Way.

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There Is A Better Way For Everything. Find It.

The Brain Can Be Developed Just The Same As The Muscles Can Be Developed, If On Will Only Take The Pains To Train The Mind To Think.

I Cannot Believe In The Immortality Of The Soul. No, All This Talk Of An Existence For Us, As Individuals, Beyond The Grave Is Wrong. It Is Born Of Our Tenacity Of Life - Our Desire To Go On Living - Our Dread Of Coming To An End.

The Great Trouble Is That The Preachers Get The Children From Six To Seven Years Of Age And Then It Is Almost Impossible To Do Anything With Them.

I Am Proud Of The Fact That I Never Invented Weapons To Kill.

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.

My Principal Business Is Giving Commercial Value To The Brilliant - But Misdirected - Ideas Of Others.

I Am More Of A Sponge Than An Inventor. I Absorb Ideas From Every Source. I Take Half-matured Schemes For Mechanical Development And Make Them Practical. I Am A Sort Of A Middleman Between The Long-haired And Impractical Inventor And The Hard-headed Business Man Who Measures All Things In Terms Of Dollars And Cents. My Principal Business Is Giving Commercial Value To The Brilliant But Misdirected Ideas Of Others.

I Believe In The Existence Of A Supreme Intelligence Pervading The Universe.

Sticking To It Is The Genius.

Surprises And Reverses Can Serve As An Incentive For Great Accomplishment. There Are No Rules Here, We're Just Trying To Accomplish Something.

Success Is Based On Imagination Plus Ambition And The Will To Work.

Religion Is All Bunk.

The Roots Of Tobacco Plants Must Go Clear Through To Hell. Satan's Principal Agent Dyspepsia Must Have Charge Of This Branch Of The Vegetable Kingdom.

I Am A Vegetarian As Well As A Passionate Anti-alcoholic, Because I Can Thus Make Better Use Of My Brain.

Show Me A Thoroughly Satisfied Man - And I Will Show You A Failure.

I Have Not Failed 700 Times. I Have Not Failed Once. I Have Succeeded In Proving That Those 700 Ways Will Not Work. When I Have Eliminated The Ways That Will Not Work, I Will Find The Way That Will Work.

My Mind Is Incapable Of Conceiving Such A Thing As A Soul. I May Be In Error, And Man May Have A Soul; But I Simply Do Not Believe It.

There Will One Day Spring From The Brain Of Science A Machine Or Force So Fearful In Its Potentialities, So Absolutely Terrifying, That Even Man, The Fighter, Who Will Dare Torture And Death In Order To Inflict Torture And Death, Will Be Appalled, And So Abandon War Forever.

Invention Is 10% Inspiration And 90% Perspiration.

There Is Far More Opportunity Than There Is Ability.

Education Isn't Play--and It Can't Be Made To Look Like Play. It Is Hard, Hard Work. But It Can Be Made Interesting Work.

I Do Not Believe In The God Of The Theologians; But That There Is A Supreme Intelligence I Do Not Doubt.

I Speak Without Exaggeration When I Say That I Have Constructed 3,000 Different Theories In Connection With The Electric Light, Each One Of Them Reasonable And Apparently Likely To Be True. Yet Only In Two Cases Did My Experiments Prove The Truth Of My Theory. My Chief Difficulty Was In Constructing The Carbon Filament... Every Quarter Of The Globe Was Ransacked By My Agents, And All Sorts Of The Queerest Materials Used, Until Finally The Shred Of Bamboo, Now Utilized By Us, Was Settled Upon.

Smoking Too Much Makes Me Nervous. Must Lasso My Natural Tendency To Acquire Such Habits. Holding Heavy Cigar Constantly In My Mouth Has Deformed My Upper Lip, It Has A Sort Of Havana Curl.

The Strength Of The Constitution, Lies In The Will Of The People To Defend It.

I Have Not Failed. I've Just Found 10,000 Ways That Won't Work.

We Haven't Failed. We Now Know A Thousand Things That Won't Work, So We Are Much Closer To Finding What Will.

Time Is Really The Only Capital That Any Human Being Has, And The Only Thing He Can't Afford To Lose.

Never Be Discouraged, Because Every Wrong Turn Attempt, When Left Behind You, Is Another Step Forward Taking You Closer To Your Goals.

I Never Did Anything By Accident, Nor Did Any Of My Inventions Come By Accident; They Came By Work.

A Diamond Is A Piece Of Coal That Stuck To The Job

This Problem, Once Solved, Will Be Simple.

As Danand Ian Over At The Lifestyle Business Podcast Say: Rush To Failure.

Inspiration Can Be Found In A Pile Of Junk. Sometimes, You Can Put It Together With A Good Imagination And Invent Something.

It Is A Terrible Situation When The Government, To Insure The National Wealth, Must Go In Debt And Submit To Ruinous Interest Charges, At The Hands Of Men, Who Control The Fictitious Value Of Gold. Interest Is The Invention Of Satan.

Nature Is Truly Wonderful. Only Man Is Truly Foul.

The Only Time I Really Become Discouraged Is When I Think Of All The Things I Would Like To Do And The Little Time I Have In Which To Do Them.

I Can Never Pick Up A Thing Without Wishing To Improve It.

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

Of The 200 Light Bulbs That Didn't Work, Every Failure Told Me Something That I Was Able To Incorporate Into The Next Attempt.

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.

In 'common Sense' Paine Flared Forth With A Document So Powerful That The Revolution Became Inevitable. Washington Recognized The Difference, And In His Calm Way Said That Matters Never Could Be The Same Again.

The Doctor Of The Future Will Give No Medication, But Will Interest His Patients In The Care Of The Human Frame, Diet And In The Cause And Prevention Of Disease. ~

First Be Sure A Thing Is Wanted Or Needed, Then Go Ahead.

I Find My Greatest Pleasure, And So My Reward, In The Work That Precedes What The World Calls Success.

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.

Of All My Inventions, I Liked The Phonograph Best

Great Inventions

I Am Quite Correctly Described As 'more Of A Sponge Than An Inventor....'

I Start Where The Last Man Left Off. What The Mind Of Man Can Conceive And Believe, The Mind Of A Man Can Achieve.

I Get My Ideas From Listening From Within.

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.

Success Is The Result Of Hard Work.

I Do Not Believe Any Type Of Religion Should Ever Be Introduced Into The Public Schools Of The United States.

Let The Public Throw Bouquets To The Inventors And In Time We Will All Be Happy.

His Genius He Was Quite Content In One Brief Sentence To Define; Of Inspiration One Percent, Of Perspiration, Ninety Nine.

Negative Results Are Just What I Want. They’re Just As Valuable To Me As Positive Results. I Can Never Find The Thing That Does The Job Best Until I Find The Ones That Don’t.

The First Requisite For Success Is To Develop The Ability To Focus.

Anything That Won't Sell, I Don't Want To Invent. Its Sale Is Proof Of Utility, And Utility Is Success.

Having A Vision For What You Want Is Not Enough...vision Without Execution Is Hallucination

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.

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Results! Why, Man, I Have Gotten A Lot Of Results. I Know Several Thousand Things That Won't Work.

The Money One Gets For Selling One's Soul Is Always Spent In Deadening One's Conscience, So The Net Gain At The End Of A Lifetime Is No Greater Than If The Diabolic Bargain Had Not Been Struck.

Nobody Knows Whether Our Personalities Pass On To Another Existence Or Sphere, But If We Can Evolve An Instrument So Delicate To Be Manipulated By Our Personality As It Survives In The Next Life Such An Instrument Ought To Record Something.

Failure Is Really A Matter Of Conceit. People Don't Work Hard Because, In Their Conceit, They Imagine They'll Succeed Without Ever Making An Effort. Most People Believe That They'll Wake Up Some Day And Find Themselves Rich. Actually, They've Got It Half Right, Because Eventually They Do Wake Up.

X-rays ... I Am Afraid Of Them. I Stopped Experimenting With Them Two Years Ago, When I Came Near To Losing My Eyesight And Dally, My Assistant Practically Lost The Use Of Both Of His Arms.

Results? Why, Man, I Have Gotten Lots Of Results! If I Find 10,000 Ways Something Won't Work, I Haven't Failed. I Am Not Discouraged, Because Every Wrong Attempt Discarded Is Often A Step Forward.

There Seems To Be No Limit To Which Some Men Will Go To Avoid The Labor Of Thinking. Thinking Is Hard Work.

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.

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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.

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.".

Every Wrong Attempt Discarded Is Another Step Forward

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.

Failure Is The Most Effective Technique To Optimize Strategic Planning, Implementation And Processes.

We Will Make Electricity So Cheap That Only The Rich Will Burn Candles.

To Get A Great Idea, Come Up With Lots Of Them.

The Thing I Lose Patience With The Most Is The Clock. Its Hands Move Too Fast

I Know This World Is Ruled By Infinite Intelligence. Everything That Surrounds Us- Everything That Exists - Proves That There Are Infinite Laws Behind It. There Can Be No Denying This Fact. It Is Mathematical In Its Precision.

Infinite Intelligence

Life's Most Soothing Things Are A Child's Goodnight And Sweet Music.

There Is Great Value In Disaster. All Our Mistakes Are Burned Up. Thank God We Can Start A New.

The Biggest Failure Of Man Is That He Gives Up Before He Realizes How Close He Was To Success.

Do The Thing And The Power Will Come.

One Might Think That The Money Value Of An Invention Constitutes Its Reward To The Man Who Loves His Work. But... I Continue To Find My Greatest Pleasure, And So My Reward, In The Work That Precedes What The World Calls Success.

I Am Afraid Of Radium And Polonium ... I Don't Want To Monkey With Them.

Genius Is One Percent Inspiration, Ninety-nine Percent Perspiration.

A Lawsuit Is The Suicide Of Time.

Whatever The Mind Of Man Creates, Should Be Controlled By Man's Character.

After We Had Conducted Thousands Of Experiments On A Certain Project Without Solving The Problem, One Of My Associates, After We Had Conducted The Crowning Experiment And It Had Proved A Failure, Expressed Discouragement And Disgust Over Our Having Failed To Find Out Anything. I Cheerily Assured Him That We Had Learned Something. For We Had Learned For A Certainty That The Thing Couldnt Be Done That Way, And That We Would Have To Try Some Other Way.

I Have A Peculiar Theory About Radium, And I Believe It Is The Correct One. I Believe That There Is Some Mysterious Ray Pervading The Universe That Is Fluorescing To It. In Other Words, That All Its Energy Is Not Self-constructed But That There Is A Mysterious Something In The Atmosphere That Scientists Have Not Found That Is Drawing Out Those Infinitesimal Atoms And Distributing Them Forcefully And Indestructibly.

The First 40 Hours Of Work Per Week Are For Survival. Everything After That Is For Success.

Sleep Is Like A Drug. Take Too Much At A Time And It Makes You Dopey. You Lose Time And Opportunities.

The Memory Of My Mother Will Always Be A Blessing To Me.

The United States, And Other Advanced Nations, Will Someday Be Able To Produce Instruments Of Death So Terrible The World Will Be In Abject Terror Of Itself And Its Ability To End Civilization.... Such War-making Weapons Should Be Developed - But Only For Purposes Of Discovery And Experimentation

Fish Seem To Be Rather Conservative Around This Bay, One Seldom Catches Enough To Form The Fundamental Basis For A Lie. Dante Left Out One Of The Torments Of Hades I Could Imagine A Doomed Mortal Made To Untangle Wet Fish Lines Forever. Everybody Lost Patience At The Stupidity Of The Fish In Not Coming Forward Promptly To Be Murdered.

To My Mind The Old Masters Are Not Art; Their Value Is In Their Scarcity.

Remember, Life Is All What You Focus On. Learn Lessons And Keep Moving Forward Towards Your Goals And Dreams... "i Have Not Failed. I've Just Found 10,000 Ways That Won't Work."

There Is Time For Everything.

I Didn't Fail 1000 Times. The Light Bulb Was An Invention With 1000 Steps.

Self Discipline

Continued Innovation Is The Best Way To Beat The Competition.

When Down In The Mouth, Remember Jonah. He Came Out All Right.

It Is Astonishing What An Effort It Seems To Be For Many People To Put Their Brains Definitely And Systematically To Work.

I Never Pick Up An Item Without Thinking Of How I Might Improve It. I Never Perfected An Invention That I Did Not Think About In Terms Of The Service It Might Give Others. I Want To Save And Advance Human Life, Not Destroy It. I Am Proud Of The Fact That I Never Invented Weapons To Kill. The Dove Is My Emblem.

Books Will Soon Be Obsolete In The Schools... Our School System Will Be Completely Changed In The Next Ten Years.

No Such Thing As Bad Results

A Man’s Best Friend Is A Good Wife.

It Has Been Just So In All My Inventions. The First Step Is An Intuition-and Comes With A Burst, Then Difficulties Arise. This Thing That Gives Out And Then That-"bugs"as Such Little Faults And Difficulties Are Called Show Themselves And Months Of Anxious Watching, Study And Labor Are Requisite Before Commercial Success-or Failure-is Certainly Reached.

Somewhere Between The Ages Of Eleven And Fifteen, The Average Child Begins To Suffer From An Atrophy, The Paralysis Of Curiosity And The Suspension Of The Power To Observe. The Trouble, I Should Judge, To Lie With The Schools.

Every Failure Is A Lesson Learned About Your Strategy.

I Will Not Say I Failed 1000 Times, I Will Say That I Discovered There Are 1000 Ways That Can Cause Failure

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.

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.

Interest Is The Invention Of Satan.

I Have Better Use For My Brain Than To Poison It With Alcohol. To Put Alcohol In The Human Brain Is Like Putting Sand In The Bearings Of An Engine.

I Owe My Success To The Fact That I Never Had A Clock In My Workroom.

We Are Like Tenant Farmers Chopping Down The Fence Around Our House For Fuel When We Should Be Using Nature's Inexhaustible Sources Of Energy - Sun, Wind And Tide. ... I'd Put My Money On The Sun And Solar Energy. What A Source Of Power! I Hope We Don't Have To Wait Until Oil And Coal Run Out Before We Tackle That.

Each Time You Fail, You Have Eliminated Another Wrong Option.

We Shall Have No Better Conditions In The Future If We Are Satisfied With All Those Which We Have At Present.

Self Confidence

Any Large Extension Of The Government Into Business Affairs - No Matter What The Pretense And No Matter How The The Extension Is Labeled - Will Be Bound To Promote Waste And Put A Curb On Our Prosperity And Progress.

The Value Of An Idea Lies In The Using Of It.

I Didn’t Fail Ten Thousand Times. I Successfully Eliminated, Ten Thousand Times, Materials And Combinations Which Wouldn’t Work.

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!

Nearly Every Man Who Develops An Idea Works It Up To The Point Where It Looks Impossible, And Then He Gets Discouraged. That's Not The Place To Become Discouraged.

Restlessness Is Discontent And Discontent Is The First Necessity Of Progress. Show Me A Thoroughly Satisfied Man And I Will Show You A Failure.

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.

Be Brave As Your Fathers Before You. Have Faith And Go Forward.

I Find Out What The World Needs. Then I Go Ahead And Try To Invent It

Discontent Is The First Necessity Of Progress.

Two Per Cent. Is Genius, And Ninety-eight Per Cent. Is Hard Work.

Never Go To Sleep Without A Request To Your Subconscious.

I Never Did A Day's Work In My Life, It Was All Fun.

My Mother Was The Making Of Me. She Was So True And So Sure Of Me, I Felt That I Had Someone To Live For - Someone I Must Not Disappoint. The Memory Of My Mother Will Always Be A Blessing To Me.

We Tried Some Experiments In Mind Reading Which Were Not Very Successful. Think Mind Reading Contrary To Common Sense, Wise Provision Of The Bon Dieu That We Cannot Read Each Others Minds, Twould Stop Civilization And Everybody Would Take To The Woods. In Fifty Or Hundred Thousand Centuries When Mankind Have Become Perfect By Evolution Then Perhaps This Sense Could Be Developed With Safety To The State.

There Cannot Be Overproduction Of Anything Which Men And Women Want. And Their Wants Are Unlimited, Except By The Size Of Their Stomachs.

I Never Quit Until I Get What I Want.

I Have Not Failed 10,000 Times. I Have Succeeded In Proving That Those 10,000 Ways Will Not Work.

The Radio Craze Will Die Out In Time.

Most Of My Ideas Belonged To Other People Who Never Bothered To Develop Them.

If I Could Solve All The Problems Myself, I Would.

I'd Put My Money On The Sun And Solar Energy. What A Source Of Power! I Hope We Don't Have To Wait Until Oil And Coal Run Out Before We Tackle That.

From His Neck Down A Man Is Worth A Couple Of Dollars A Day, From His Neck Up He Is Worth Anything That His Brain Can Produce.

I Would Rather Have One Man With Enthusiasm Working With Me Than Ten Who Are Complacent.

The Bible Of Nature Is The Best Damn Bible In The World. Its Laws Are Perfect And Grand, And All The Prayers In The World Can't Change Them. There Is Intelligence And Law In This World, And There May Be Supreme Intelligence And Law, But So Far As The Religion Of The Day Is Concerned, It Is All A Damned Fake.

Being Busy Does Not Always Mean Real Work.

Infinite Intelligence

Because Ideas Have To Be Original Only With Regard To Their Adaptation To The Problem At Hand, I Am Always Extremely Interested In How Others Have Used Used Them.

The Perils Of Overwork Are Slight Compared With The Dangers Of Inactivity.

To Have A Great Idea, Have A Lot Of Them.

The Endeavor To Change Universal Power By Selfish Supplication I Do Not Believe In.

Our Greatest Weakness Lies In Giving Up.

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.

All Bibles Are Man-made.

The Only Thing I Use My Body For Is To Carry My Brain Around.

As A Cure For Worrying, Work Is Far Better Than Whiskey. I Always Found That, If I Began To Worry, The Best Thing I Could Do Was Focus Upon Doing Something Useful And Then Work Very Hard At It. Soon, I Would Forget What Was Troubling Me.

Great Ideas Originate In The Muscles.

Genius Is 99% Perspiration And 1% Inspiration.

When We Learn How To Store Electricity, We Will Cease Being Apes Ourselves; Until Then We Are Tailless Orangutans. You See, We Should Utilize Natural Forces And Thus Get All Of Our Power. Sunshine Is A Form Of Energy, And The Winds And The Tides Are Manifestations Of Energy. Do We Use Them? Oh, No! We Burn Up Wood And Coal, As Renters Burn Up The Front Fence For Fuel. We Live Like Squatters, Not As If We Owned The Property.

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.

I Never Did Anything Worth Doing By Accident, Nor Did Any Of My Inventions Come Indirectly Through Accident, Except The Phonograph. No, When I Have, Fully Decided That A Result Is Worth Getting, I Go About It, And Make Trial After Trial, Until It Comes.

Anything Worth Doing

I Was At The Foot Of My Class.

Incurably Religious, That Is The Best Way To Describe The Mental Condition Of So Many People.

If The Nation Can Issue A Dollar Bond It Can Issue A Dollar Bill. The Element That Makes The Bond Good Makes The Bill Good Also. The Difference Between The Bond And The Bill Is That The Bond Lets The Money Broker Collect Twice The Amount Of The Bond And An Additional 20%. Whereas The Currency, The Honest Sort Provided By The Constitution Pays Nobody But Those Who Contribute In Some Useful Way. It Is Absurd To Say Our Country Can Issue Bonds And Cannot Issue Currency. Both Are Promises To Pay, But One Fattens The Usurer And The Other Helps The People.

First, Study The Present Construction. Second, Ask For All Past Experiences ...study And Read Everything You Can On The Subject.

If There Is A Better Solution... Find It.

The Doctor Of The Future Will Give No Medicine, But Will Involve The Patient In The Proper Use Of Food, Fresh Air And Exercise

Vision Without Execution Is Delusion.

Five Percent Of The People Think; Ten Percent Of The People Think They Think; And The Other Eighty-five Percent Would Rather Die Than Think.

Willful Ignorance

When I Have Eliminated The Ways That Will Not Work, I Will Find The Way That Will Work.

There Is Much More Opportunity Than There Are People To See It.

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.

Lost Friendship

Opportunity Is Missed By Most People Because It Is Dressed In Overalls And Looks Like Work.

It Is Very Beautiful Over There. (last Words)

My Main Purpose In Life Is To Make Enough Money To Create Ever More Inventions…. The Dove Is My Emblem…. I Want To Save And Advance Human Life, Not Destroy It…. I Am Proud Of The Fact That I Have Never Invented Weapons To Kill….

They Say President Wilson Has Blundered. Perhaps He Has, But I Notice He Usually Blunders Forward.

What Is A College? An Institute Of Learning. What Is A Business? An Institute Of Learning. Life, Itself, Is An Institute Of Learning.

Never Stop Learning

Youth Doesn't Take Advice.

Success Is The Product Of The Severest Kind Of Mental And Physical Application.

The Body Is A Community Made Up Of Its Innumerable Cells Or Inhabitants.

Large Portions Of Life's Disappointments Are Individuals Who Did Not Understand That They Were So Near Achievement When They Surrendered.

If Parents Pass Enthusiasm Along To Their Children, They Will Leave Them An Estate Of Incalculable Value

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.

It Is Remarkable To What Lengths People Will Go To Avoid Thought.

Today, I Am Wondering What Would Have Happened To Me By Now, If, Fifty Years Ago, Some Fluent Talker Had Converted Me To The Theory Of The Eight-hour Day And Convinced Me That It Was Not Fair To My Fellow-workers To Put Forth My Best Efforts In My Work? I Am Glad That The Eight-hour Day Had Not Been Invented When I Was A Young Man. If My Life Had Been Made Up Of Eight-hour Days, I Don't Believe I Could Have Accomplished A Great Deal.

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.

I Start Where The Last Man Left Off.

The World Owes Nothing To Any Man, But Every Man Owes Something To The World.

Be Courageous. I Have Seen Many Depressions In Business. Always America Has Emerged From These Stronger And More Prosperous. Be Brave As Your Fathers Before You. Have Faith! Go Forward!

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

When You Have Exhausted All Possibilities, Remember This - You Haven't.

I Did Not Fail Two Thousand Times. I Merely Found Two Thousand Ways Not To Make A Lightbulb.

The Greatest Invention In The World Is The Mind Of A Child.

I've Realized That Most Of My Best Ideas Have Followed A Good Night's Sleep.

I Never Did Anything Worth Doing Entirely By Accident. . . Almost None Of My Inventions Came About Totally By Accident. They Were Achieved By Having Trained Myself To Endure And Tolerate Hard Work.

There Is No Subsitute For Hard Work.

I Never Knew I Had An Inventive Talent Until Phrenology Told Me So. I Was A Stranger To Myself Until Then!

So Far As The Religion Of The Day Is Concerned, It Is A Damned Fake ... Religion Is All Bunk.

If There Is A God

For Faith, As Well Intentioned As It May Be, Must Be Built On Facts, Not Fiction - Faith In Fiction Is A Damnable False Hope.

I Have Never Seen The Slightest Scientific Proof Of The Religious Ideas Of Heaven And Hell, Of Future Life For Individuals, Or Of A Personal God.

If There Is A God

I Am Much Less Interested In What Is Called God's Word Than In God's Deeds. All Bibles Are Man-made.

Success Depends On How Many Experiments You Can Fit Into 24 Hours

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