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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.

-Thomas A. Edison

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I Speak Without Exaggeration

Thomas A. Edison

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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.

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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.

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

Friendship Is The Heaven Of Life.

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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.

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.

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

A Good Idea Is Never Lost. Even Though Its Originator Or Possessor May Die, It Will Someday Be Reborn In The Mind Of Another.

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

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

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Vision Without Execution Is Delusion.

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.

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

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

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

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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. ~

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.

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

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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.

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

Even Though I Am Nearly Deaf, I Seem To Be Gifted With A Kind Of Inner Hearing Which Enables Me To Detect Sounds And Noises Which The Ordinary Person Does Not Hear.

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The Trouble With Most People Is That They Quit Before They Start.

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.

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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.

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

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

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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.

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A Teacher Sent The Following Note Home With A Six-year-old Boy 'he Is Too Stupid To Learn.' That Boy Was Thomas A. Edison.

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

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 67, But I'm Not Too Old To Make A Fresh Start.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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Success Is 90% Perspiration And 10% Inspiration!

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

The Secret Of Success Is Focus Of Purpose.

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 .

There Is No Substitute For Hard Work.

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.

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

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 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.

There Is Far More Opportunity Than There Is Ability.

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 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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

Self Discipline

I Am Both Pleased But Astonished By The Fact That Mankind Has Not Yet Begun To Use All The Means And Devices That Are Available For Destruction. I Hope That Such Weapons Are Never Manufactured In Quantity.

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

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

I Was At The Foot Of My Class.

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.

Do The Thing And The Power Will Come.

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

Everything Comes To Those Who Hustle While They Wait.

What You Are Will Show In What You Do.

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.

A Man’s Best Friend Is A Good Wife.

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

Never Go To Sleep Without A Request To Your Subconscious.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.".

I Am Long On Ideas, But Short On Time. I Expect To Live To Be Only About A Hundred.

The Successful Person Makes A Habit Of Doing What The Failing Person Doesn't Like To Do.

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

Interest Is The Invention Of Satan.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

It Is Very Beautiful Over There. (last Words)

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

Absorb Ideas From Every Source.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Value Of A Good Idea Is In Using It.

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

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.

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

Sticking To It Is The Genius.

A Reporter Called On Edison To Interview Him About A Substitute For Lead In The Manufacture Of Storage Batteries That The Scientist Was Seeking. Edison Informed The Man That He Had Made 20,000 Experiments But None Had Worked. "aren't You Discouraged By All This Waste Of Effort?" The Reporter Asked. Edison: "waste! There's Nothing Wasted. I Have Discovered 20,000 Things That Won't Work."

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

That Is To Say, Under The Old Way Any Time We Wish To Add To The National Wealth We Are Compelled To Add To The National Debt. Now, That Is What Henry Ford Wants To Prevent. He Thinks It Is Stupid, And So Do I, That For The Loan Of $30,000,000 Of Their Own Money The People Of The United States Should Be Compelled To Pay $66,000,000 - That Is What It Amounts To, With Interest.

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

Direct Thought Is Not An Attribute Of Feminity. In This, Women Are Now Centuries Behind Man.

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

I Get My Ideas From Listening From Within.

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.

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

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.

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

Good Intentions

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

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.

Good Fortune Is What Happens When Opportunity Meets With Planning.

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