Top 100 Thomas A. Edison Quotes
#1. I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds. All bibles are man-made.
Thomas A. Edison
#2. There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking. Thinking is hard work.
Thomas A. Edison
#3. The man who doesn't make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.
Thomas A. Edison
#4. It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
Thomas A. Edison
#5. An average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.
Thomas A. Edison
#8. The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do.
Thomas A. Edison
#10. 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 ... .
Thomas A. Edison
#12. I am so deaf I am debarred from hearing all the time articulation and have to depend on the judgment of others.
Thomas A. Edison
#13. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#14. 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
Thomas A. Edison
#15. Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application,
Thomas A. Edison
#16. Nearly every person who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.
Thomas A. Edison
#17. 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
Thomas A. Edison
#18. I have not failed. I have successfully discovered 1200 ideas that don't work.
Thomas A. Edison
#20. Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music.
Thomas A. Edison
#21. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward.
Thomas A. Edison
#23. Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.
Thomas A. Edison
#24. M. A. Rosanoff: Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe. Edison: There ain't no rules around here. We're trying to accomplish somep'n!
Thomas A. Edison
#25. I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.
Thomas A. Edison
#27. The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.
Thomas A. Edison
#28. Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don't Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can't Decide My Future
Thomas A. Edison
#29. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#30. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#31. No, I haven't failed thousands of times. On the contrary, I have successfully eliminated thousands of ideas that do not work!
Thomas A. Edison
#33. What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.
Thomas A. Edison
#36. The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast
Thomas A. Edison
#38. I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.
Thomas A. Edison
#39. Show me a completely contented person and I'll show you a failure.
Thomas A. Edison
#40. Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking around laboratory tables all day. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
Thomas A. Edison
#41. I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
Thomas A. Edison
#42. I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure
Thomas A. Edison
#43. I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it
Thomas A. Edison
#44. A failure teaches you that something can't be done-that way.
Thomas A. Edison
#46. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#47. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
Thomas A. Edison
#48. I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.
Thomas A. Edison
#49. Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
Thomas A. Edison
#50. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#51. It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.
Thomas A. Edison
#52. I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.
Thomas A. Edison
#53. When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.
Thomas A. Edison
#54. The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
Thomas A. Edison
#55. Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation - rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.
Thomas A. Edison
#56. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
Thomas A. Edison
#58. The only thing I use my body for is to carry my brain around.
Thomas A. Edison
#59. We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work
Thomas A. Edison
#60. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#61. Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.
Thomas A. Edison
#62. IF PARENTS PASS ENTHUSIASM ALONG TO THEIR CHILDREN, THEY WILL LEAVE THEM AN ESTATE OF INCALCULABLE VALUE
Thomas A. Edison
#63. There are no rules here
we're trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison
#65. I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.
Thomas A. Edison
#66. I have never failed, I've only shown the way I did it before doesn't work.
Thomas A. Edison
#67. Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.
Thomas A. Edison
#68. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.
Thomas A. Edison
#69. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#70. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#72. I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.
Thomas A. Edison
#73. 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 ...
Thomas A. Edison
#74. I never knew I had an inventive talent until Phrenology told me so. I was a stranger to myself until then!
Thomas A. Edison
#75. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#76. It is the best book ever written on the subject. There is nothing like it!
Thomas A. Edison
#77. 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 ...
Thomas A. Edison
#78. As Danand Ian over at the Lifestyle Business Podcast say: Rush to failure.
Thomas A. Edison
#79. People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward
Thomas A. Edison
#80. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#81. The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.
Thomas A. Edison
#82. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#83. I didn't fail ten thousand times.
I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times,
materials and combinations which wouldn't work.
Thomas A. Edison
#84. I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.
Thomas A. Edison
#85. I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.
Thomas A. Edison
#87. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#88. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#90. Genius? Nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! ...
I've failed my way to success.
Thomas A. Edison
#93. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#95. The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.
Thomas A. Edison
#97. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#98. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#99. If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Thomas A. Edison
#100. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
