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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!

-Thomas A. Edison

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Oh These Mathematicians Make

Thomas A. Edison

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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!

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

Good Intentions

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

An Average American Loves His Family. If He Has Any Love Left Over For Some Other Person, He Generally Selects Mark Twain.

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.

Ideas Without Execution Are Hallucinations.

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

All Bibles Are Man-made.

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 Best Thinking Has Been Done In Solitude. The Worst Has Been Done In Turmoil.

Continued Innovation Is The Best Way To Beat The Competition.

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

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

Invention Is 10% Inspiration And 90% Perspiration.

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

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

Self Discipline

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

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.

Interest Is The Invention Of Satan.

Success Is The Result Of Hard Work.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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

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

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.

The Most Necessary Task Of Civilization Is To Teach People How To Think. It Should Be The Primary Purpose Of Our Public Schools. The Mind Of A Child Is Naturally Active, It Develops Through Exercise. Give A Child Plenty Of Exercise, For Body And Brain. The Trouble With Our Way Of Educating Is That It Does Not Give Elasticity To The Mind. It Casts The Brain Into A Mold. It Insists That The Child Must Accept. It Does Not Encourage Original Thought Or Reasoning, And It Lays More Stress On Memory Than Observation.

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

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.

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.

Genius Is Not Inspired. Inspiration Is Perspiration.

A Man’s Best Friend Is A Good Wife.

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

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

I've Never Made A Mistake. I've Only Learned From Experience.

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

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

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.

Work While Others Are Wishing.

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

Vision Without Execution Is Delusion.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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 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.

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

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

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

Accomplishing Something Provides The Only Real Satisfaction In Life.

Satisfaction In Life

No Such Thing As Bad Results

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

Never Go To Sleep Without A Request To Your Subconscious.

I Failed My Way To Success.

There Is A Better Way For Everything. Find It.

I Never Pick Up An Item Without Thinking Of How I Might Improve It.

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

The Radio Craze Will Die Out In Time.

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

The Man Who Doesn’t Make Up His Mind To Cultivate The Habit Of Thinking Misses The Greatest Pleasure In Life.

Youth Doesn't Take Advice.

Show Me A Completely Contented Person And I'll Show You A Failure.

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

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

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.

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."

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."

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

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

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

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.

Consider Data Without Prejudice.

Our Greatest Weakness Lies In Giving Up.

The Secret Of Success Is Focus Of Purpose.

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.

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

Every Wrong Attempt Discarded Is Another Step Forward

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

Absorb Ideas From Every Source.

There Is No Substitute For Hard Work.

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

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.

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

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

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 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 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 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.

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

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

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

This Problem, Once Solved, Will Be Simple.

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

I Never Quit Until I Get What I Want.

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

Sticking To It Is The Genius.

I Never Failed Once. It Just Happened To Be A 2000-step Process.

Until Man Duplicates A Blade Of Grass, Nature Can Laugh At His So-called Scientific Knowledge. Remedies From Chemicals Will Never Stand In Favor Compared With The Products Of Nature, The Living Cell Of The Plant, The Final Result Of The Rays Of The Sun, The Mother Of All Life.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Everything Comes To Those Who Hustle While They Wait.

The Value Of A Good Idea Is In Using It.

I Have Had A Lot Of Success With Failure

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

I Have Friends In Overalls Whose Friendship I Would Not Swap For The Favor Of The Kings Of The World.

We Don't Know A Millionth Of One Percent About Anything.

If I Had Not Had So Much Ambition And Not Tried To Do So Many Things, I Probably Would Have Been Happier, But Less Useful.

Great Ideas Originate In The Muscles.

Genius Defined: Of Inspiration 1% Percent, Of Perspiration, 99%.

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.

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

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

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

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 Three Great Essentials To Achieve Anything Worth While Are: Hard Work, Stick-to-itiveness, And Common Sense.

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.

Good Fortune Is What Happens When Opportunity Meets With Planning.

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

Funny Inspirational

It Is Very Beautiful Over There. (last Words)

Religion Is All Bunk.

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

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

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

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

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.

Maturity Is Often More Absurd Than Youth And Very Frequently Is Most Unjust To Youth.

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

Imagination Creativity

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

I Make More Mistakes Than Anyone Else I Know, And Sooner Or Later, I Patent Most Of Them.

Funny Inspirational

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

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

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

Self Confidence

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.

I Have Determined That There Is No Market For Talking Pictures

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.

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.

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.

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

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

A Genius Is A Talented Person Who Does His Homework.

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.

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

I Am So Deaf I Am Debarred From Hearing All The Time Articulation And Have To Depend On The Judgment Of Others.

Every Failure Is A Lesson Learned About Your Strategy.

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 .

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 Know This World Is Ruled By Infinite Intelligence. It Required Infinite Intelligence To Create It And It Requires Infinite Intelligence To Keep It On Its Course ... It Is Mathematical In Its Precision.

Infinite Intelligence

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.

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

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

Genius Is 1 Percent Inspiration, 99 Percent Perspiration.

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

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.

To Those Searching For Truth -- Not The Truth Of Dogma And Darkness But The Truth Brought By Reason, Search, Examination, And Inquiry, Discipline Is Required. For Faith, As Well Intentioned As It May Be, Must Be Built On Facts, Not Fiction -- Faith In Fiction Is A Damnable False Hope.

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

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

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.

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

Be Courageous! Have Faith! Go Forward.

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.

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

There Is Far More Opportunity Than There Is Ability.

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 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.

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

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

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

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