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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.

-Thomas A. Edison

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I Never Did Anything

Thomas A. Edison

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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.

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Anything Worth Doing

More From Thomas A. Edison

Through All The Years Of Experimenting And Research, I Never Once Made A Discovery. I Start Where The Last Man Left Off... All My Work Was Deductive, And The Results I Achieved Were Those Of Invention Pure And Simple.

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.

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

The Injurious Agent In Cigarettes Comes Principally From The Burning Paper Wrapper. The Substance Thereby Formed Is Called "acrolein." It Has A Violent Action On The Nerve Centers, Producing Degeneration Of The Cells Of The Brain, Which Is Quite Rapid Among Boys. Unlike Most Narcotics, This Degeneration Is Permanent And Uncontrollable. I Employ No Person Who Smokes Cigarettes.

I Owe My Success To The Fact That I Never Had A Clock In My Workroom. Seventy-five Of Us Worked Twenty Hours Every Day And Slept Only Four Hours - And Thrived On It.

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

Everything Comes To Those Who Hustle While They Wait.

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

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

Seeming To Do Is Not Doing.

Religion Is All Bunk.

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.

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.

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.

Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don’t Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can’t Decide My Future

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 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 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.

I Failed My Way To Success.

The Doctor Of The Future Will No Longer Treat The Human Frame With Drugs, But Rather Will Cure And Prevent Disease With Nutrition.

The Greatest Discoveries Will Be Along Spiritual Lines. This Is The Field Where Miracles Are Going To Happen. Spiritual Power Is The Greatest Underdeveloped Power And Has The Greatest Future.

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. ~

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 Of Success Is The Ability To Apply Your Physical And Mental Energies To One Problem Without Growing Weary.

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.

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.

Many A Person Who Could Not Comprehend Rousseau, And Would Be Puzzled By Montesquieu, Could Understand Paine As An Open Book. He Wrote With A Clarity, A Sharpness Of Outline And Exactness Of Speech That Even A Schoolboy Should Be Able To Grasp.

People Are Not Remembered By How Few Times They Fail, But By How Often They Succeed. Every Wrong Step Is Another Step Forward

When I Have Fully Decided That A Result Is Worth Getting I Go Ahead Of It And Make Trial After Trial Until It Comes.

To Invent, You Need A Good Imagination And A Pile Of Junk.

Imagination Creativity

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

It Is The Best Book Ever Written On The Subject. There Is Nothing Like It!

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

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

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.

To Monsieur Eiffel The Engineer, The Brave Builder Of So Gigantic And Original A Specimen Of Modern Engineering From One Who Has The Greatest Respect And Admiration For All Engineers Including The Great Engineer The Bon Dieu.

I Told [kruesi] I Was Going To Record Talking, And Then Have The Machine Talk Back. He Thought It Absurd. However, It Was Finished, The Foil Was Put On; I Then Shouted "mary Had A Little Lamb," Etc. I Adjusted The Reproducer, And The Machine Reproduced It Perfectly. On First Words Spoken On A Phonograph.

Never Go To Sleep Without A Request To Your Subconscious.

I'll Try Anything...i'll Even Try Limburger Cheese!

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.

A Lawsuit Is The Suicide Of Time.

Non-violence Leads To The Highest Ethics, Which Is The Goal Of All Evolution. Until We Stop Harming All Other Living Beings, We Are Still Savages.

Genius? Nothing! Sticking To It Is The Genius! Any Other Bright-minded Fellow Can Accomplish Just As Much If He Will Stick Like Hell And Remember Nothing That's Any Good Works By Itself. You've Got To Make The Damn Thing Work!...i Failed My Way To Success.

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.

It Is Very Beautiful Over There. (last Words)

The Chief Function Of The Body Is To Carry The Brain Around.

I Remember That I Was Never Able To Get Along At School. I Was At The Foot Of The Class.

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

An Idea Is Something That Won't Work Unless You Do.

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

Nature Made Us - Nature Did It All - Not The Gods Of The Religions.

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

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.

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.

The Value Of A Good Idea Is In Using It.

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

I Love Great Music And Art, But I Think 'cubist' Songs And Paintings Are Hideous.

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

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

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

It Is Very Different To Make A Practical System And To Introduce It. A Few Experiments In The Laboratory Would Prove The Practicability Of System Long Before It Could Be Brought Into General Use. You Can Take A Pipe And Put A Little Coal In It, Close It Up, Heat It And Light The Gas That Comes Out Of The Stem, But That Is Not Introducing Gas Lighting. I'll Bet That If It Were Discovered To-morrow In New York That Gas Could Be Made Out Of Coal It Would Be At Least Five Years Before The System Would Be In General Use.

Nineteen Hundred And Three Will Bring Great Advances In Surgery, In The Study Of Bacteria, In The Knowledge Of The Cause And Prevention Of Disease. Medicine Is Played Out. Every New Discovery Of Bacteria Shows Us All The More Convincingly That We Have Been Wrong And That The Million Tons Of Stuff We Have Taken Was All Useless.

Everything Comes To Him Who Hustles While He Waits.

This Problem, Once Solved, Will Be Simple.

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.

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

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

Your Worth Consists In What You Are And Not In What You Have.

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.

No, I Haven't Failed Thousands Of Times. On The Contrary, I Have Successfully Eliminated Thousands Of Ideas That Do Not Work!

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

Perhaps Dandruff Is The Excreta Of The Mind The Quantity Of This Material Being Directly Proportional To The Amount Of Reading One Indulges In. A Book On German Metaphysics Would Thus Easily Ruin A Dress Suit.

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

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

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

Self Discipline

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.

Nature Is What We Know. We Do Not Know The Gods Of Religions. And Nature Is Not Kind, Or Merciful, Or Loving. If God Made Me - The Fabled God Of The Three Qualities Of Which I Spoke: Mercy, Kindness, Love - He Also Made The Fish I Catch And Eat. And Where Do His Mercy, Kindness, And Love For That Fish Come In? No; Nature Made Us - Nature Did It All - Not The Gods Of The Religions.

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

Self Confidence

Barring Serious Accidents, If You Are Not Preoccupied With Worry And You Work Hard, You Can Look Forward To A Reasonably Lengthy Existence.... Its Not The Hard Work That Kills, Its The Worrying That Kills.

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

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 Start Where The Last Man Left Off.

Our Greatest Weakness Lies In Giving Up. The Most Certain Way To Succeed Is Always To Try Just One More Time.

The Secret Of Success Is Focus Of Purpose.

I Have Been At Work For Some Time Building An Apparatus To See If It Is Possible For Personalities Which Have Left This Earth To Communicate With Us.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Discontent Is The First Necessity Of Progress.

We Have Merely Scratched The Surface Of The Store Of Knowledge Which Will Come To Us. I Believe That We Are Now, A-tremble On The Verge Of Vast Discoveries - Discoveries So Wondrously Important They Will Upset The Present Trend Of Human Thought And Start It Along Completely New Lines .

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

The Beauty Of A Great Idea Lies In The Art Of Using It.

The Reason A Lot Of People Do Not Recognize Opportunity Is Because It Usually Goes Around Wearing Overalls Looking Like Hard Work.

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

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

Fools Call Wise Men Fools. A Wise Man Never Calls Any Man A Fool.

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

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

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.

A Good Intention, With A Bad Approach, Often Leads To A Poor Result.

Good Intentions

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.

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

The Radio Craze Will Die Out In Time.

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.

I Think That Ingersoll Had All The Attributes Of A Perfect Man, And, In My Opinion, No Finer Personality Ever Existed. Judging From The Past, I Cannot Help Thinking That The Intention Of The Supreme Intelligence That Rules The World Is To Ultimately Make Such A Type Of Man Universal.

I Was At The Foot Of My Class.

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

My Success Is Due More To My Ability To Work Continuously On One Thing Without Stopping Than To Any Other Single Quality.

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.

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

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

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

What You Are Will Show In What You Do.

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

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

The Inventor Tries To Meet The Demand Of A Crazy Civilization.

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 Things That Are Most Essential To Achievement Are Common Sense, Hard Work And Stick-to-it-iv-ness.

In Creating Technology For Ourselves We Created It For The World.

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 Determined That There Is No Market For Talking Pictures

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

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.

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.

Every Failure Is A Lesson Learned About Your Strategy.

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.

Vivid Imagination

It Is Absurd To Say That Our Country Can Issue $30,000,000 In Bonds And Not $30,000,000 In Currency. Both Are Promises To Pay; But One Promise Fattens The Usurer (banker), And The Other Helps The People. If The Currency Issued By The Government Were No Good, Then The Bonds Issued Would Be No Good Either. It Is A Terrible Situation When The Government, To Increase The National Wealth, Must Go Into Debt And Submit To Ruinous Interest Charges At The Hands Of Men Who Control The Fictitious Values Of Gold.

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.

Before You Reject An Idea, Find At Least Five Good Things About It.

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

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.

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

Unfortunately, There Seems To Be Far More Opportunity Out There Than Ability.... We Should Remember That Good Fortune Often Happens When Opportunity Meets With Preparation.

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.

There Is A Better Way To Do It - Find It!

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.

Do The Thing And The Power Will Come.

Nothing That's Good Works By Itself, You've Got To Make The Damn Thing Work.

It Is The People Who Constitute The Basis Of Government Credit. Why Then Cannot The People Have Benefit Of Their Own Gilt-edge Credit By Receiving Non-interest Bearing Currency-instead Of Bankers Receiving The Benefit Of The People's Credit In Interest-bearing Bonds. If The United States Government Will Adopt This Policy Of Increasing Its National Wealth Without Contributing To The Interest Collector-for The Whole National Debt Is Made Up On Interest Charges-then You Will See An Era Of Progress And Prosperity In This Country Such As Could Never Have Come Otherwise.

There's A Way To Do It Better - Find It.

There Is No Substitute For Hard Work.

Just Because Something Doesn't Do What You Planned It To Do Doesn't Mean It's Useless.

Funny Inspirational

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

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

I Have Not Failed. I've Just Found 10,000 Foundations And Individual Donors Whose Priorities Don't Align With My Organization's.

When You Become Quiet, It Just Dawns On You

The Entity That Gives Life And Motion To The Human Body Is Finer Still And Lies Infinitely Beyond The Reach Of Our Finest Scientific Instruments. When This Entity Deserts The Body, The Body Is Like A Ship Without A Rudder - Deserted, Motionless, Dead.

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

I Consider Paine Our Greatest Political Thinker. As We Have Not Advanced, And Perhaps Never Shall Advance, Beyond The Declaration And Constitution, So Paine Has Had No Successors Who Extended His Principles.

Baseball Is The Greatest Of American Games. Some Say Football, But It Is My Firm Belief, And It Shall Always Be, That Baseball Has No Superior.

Genius? Nothing! Sticking To It Is The Genius! ... I've Failed My Way To Success.

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.

A Failure Teaches You That Something Can't Be Done-that Way.

Youth Doesn't Take Advice.

To Me, The Idea And Expectation That The Day Is Slowly And Surely Coming When We Will Be Able To Honestly Say We Are Our Brother's Keeper And Not His Oppressor Is Very Beautiful .

I Try Not To Invent Things That People Don't Need.

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

There Is No Subsitute For Hard Work.

There Is Time For Everything.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Focus On How The End-user Customers Perceive The Impact Of Your Innovation - Rather Than On How You, The Innovators, Perceive It.

You Can't Realize Your Dreams Unless You Have One To Begin With.

I Never View Mistakes As Failures. They Are Simply Opportunities To Find Out What Doesn't Work.

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.

I Never Once Failed At Making A Light Bulb. I Just Found Out 99 Ways Not To Make One.

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.

Consider Data Without Prejudice.

No Such Thing As Bad Results

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

A Man’s Best Friend Is A Good Wife.

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

I Believe That The Science Of Chemistry Alone Almost Proves The Existence Of An Intelligent Creator.

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

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

What A Man's Mind Can Create, Man's Character Can Control.

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.

There Is No Limit To Which A Man Will Not Go To Avoid Thinking.

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

The Dove Is My Emblem.

I Never Failed. It Just Didn't Work 10,000 Times.

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

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.

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.

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

There Is Always A Better Way.

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

Many Of Life's Failures Are People Who Did Not Realize How Close They Were To Success When They Gave Up.

Be Courageous! Have Faith! Go Forward.

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.

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