Top 100 Edison's Quotes
#1. There's a poster with Thomas Edison's quote: GENIUS IS 1 PERCENT INSPIRATION AND 99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION.
Lauren Oliver
#3. Thomas Edison's last words were "It's very beautiful over there". I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.
John Green
#4. Today. By the end of 1882, Edison's company is powering electric light for the entire Pearl Street district in Lower Manhattan.
Steven Johnson
#5. preserving the essence, in fact the breath - when it opened, his museum displayed Thomas Edison's last exhalation, captured by his son in a test tube at Ford's request - of a more durable American experience.
Greg Grandin
#6. Too often we forget that genius, too, depends upon the data within its reach, that even Archimedes could not have devised Edison's inventions.
Ernest Dimnet
#7. When Thomas Edison's factory burned to the ground in 1914, destroying one-of-a-kind prototypes and causing $23 million in damage, Edison's response was simple:
"Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start fresh again.
Thomas Edison
#8. So I know she forgives me, just as I forgive her. Thomas Edison's last words were: 'It very beautiful over there.' I do not know where there is, bit I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it is beautiful.
John Green
#9. The greatest Electrical Pioneer of them all was Thomas Edison Edison's first major invention, in 1877, was the phonograph, which could soon be found in thousands of American homes, where it basically sat until 1923, when the record was invented.
Dave Barry
#10. Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.
Thomas A. Edison
#11. Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.
Thomas A. Edison
#12. 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
#13. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#14. Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music.
Thomas A. Edison
#15. [Sweets Edison] was one of the greatest stylists in Jazz of all time. And on top of that, when you listen to him, you say 'yes, that's Sweets' and you automatically smile. This is really unique. He changed the way how to play this instrument.
Clark Terry
#16. Alexander Dow, his boss at Edison, who thought him immensely talented, tried to dissuade him. "Electricity, yes," Dow told Ford. "That's the coming thing. But gas - no.
David Halberstam
#17. Nothing that's good works by itself, you've got to make the damn thing work.
Thomas A. Edison
#18. What's afterlife?" Asher asked, sincerely, indicating a trio of passing shoppers laden with brightly colored bags, who turned up their noses. "There's only life.
David Edison
#19. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#20. 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
Thomas A. Edison
#21. No doubt you are wondering what you will find, out there.' The Commandant said it for me.
'Well, it would be useless for me to try and tell you. The desert tells a different story every time one ventures on it ...
Robert Edison Fulton Jr.
#22. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#23. 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
#24. Any man who takes a job with the idea that it is simply a springboard for something else is a chump. His attention will be more on the other things than on the job at hand and so he will fail.
Charles Edison
#26. Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something.
Thomas A. Edison
#27. A new constitution should be more amendable. A needlessly confusing system of courts should be altered to produce an arrangement that would be simple, responsible, and less awkward.
Charles Edison
#29. The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.
Thomas A. Edison
#31. I start where the last man left off. What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve.
Thomas A. Edison
#32. 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
#34. It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today.
Benjamin Carson
#35. The average person would have quit at the first failure. That's why there have been many average men and only one Edison.
Napoleon Hill
#36. Bill Gates wants people to think he's Edison, when he's really Rockefeller. Referring to Gates as the smartest man in America isn't right ... wealth isn't the same thing as intelligence.
Larry Ellison
#38. What we call creative work, ought not to be called work at all, because it isn't. I imagine that Thomas Edison never did a day's work in his last fifty years.
Stephen Leacock
#40. I am a man who knows nothing, guesses sometimes, finds frequently and who's always amazed.
Villiers De L'Isle-Adam
#41. 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
#42. Yes, my grandfather worked with Thomas Edison on the electric car, and he sold electric cars at the 1900 World's Fair in Paris.
Al Jardine
#43. I've realized that most of my best ideas have followed a good night's sleep.
Thomas A. Edison
#44. Once I can focus in on something, I just play it in my mind until an idea comes from out of nowhere, and it's usually the key to the whole song. It's the idea that matters. It's like electricity was around long before Edison harnessed it.
Bob Dylan
#45. Large portions of life's disappointments are individuals who did not understand that they were so near achievement when they surrendered.
Thomas A. Edison
#46. 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 .
Thomas A. Edison
#47. My goal was to make New Jersey's state government a model for all other states to emulate, hopefully thereby to stem, or at least slow down, the flow of power to the federal government.
Charles Edison
#48. Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
Thomas A. Edison
#49. We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work
Thomas A. Edison
#50. Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
Thomas A. Edison
#53. What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.
Thomas A. Edison
#54. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#56. 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
#57. We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.
Thomas A. Edison
#58. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#61. My principal professional objective is to introduce intelligence as the ubiquitous utility. I'd like to be the Thomas Edison of intelligence.
Michael J. Saylor
#62. The man who doesn't make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.
Thomas A. Edison
#65. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#66. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#67. Einstein is loved because he is gentle, respected because he is wise. Relativity being not for most of us, we elevate its author to a position somewhere between Edison, who gave us a tangible gleam, and God, who gave us the difficult dark and the hope of penetrating it.
E.B. White
#68. I also know that Edison believed the moment between being awake and being asleep was a veil, and it was in that moment that we were most connected to our higher selves.
Jodi Picoult
#69. If Thomas Edison invented electric light today, Dan Rather would report it on CBS News as, 'Candle-making industry threatened'.
Newt Gingrich
#70. 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
#71. It is necessary to take an active part in politics to observe how often the welfare of the party organization is put before the issues, even before the welfare of the commonwealth.
Charles Edison
#73. There was no lightbulb moment in the story of the lightbulb. By the time Edison flipped the switch at the Pearl Street station, a handful of other firms were already selling their own models of incandescent electric lamps.
Steven Johnson
#74. Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.
Thomas A. Edison
#75. They laughed at Edison and Einstein, but somehow I still feel uncomfortable when they laugh at me.
Ashleigh Brilliant
#76. 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
#78. I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did.
Steve Jobs
#79. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#80. The fact that Edison was a supporter of the mechanical breakthroughs in the physical world doesn't mean he wasn't equally entranced by the metaphysical.
Jodi Picoult
#81. Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people.
Thomas A. Edison
#82. The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do.
Thomas A. Edison
#83. Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.
Thomas A. Edison
#84. The biggest failure of man is that he gives up before he realizes how close he was to success.
Thomas A. Edison
#85. Imagine if Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison or Albert Einstein were all alive 10, 20, 30 years before we know them to be alive; it would have advanced the world that much sooner.
Marc Guggenheim
#86. The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
Thomas A. Edison
#89. I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.
Thomas A. Edison
#90. My success is due more to my ability to work continuously on one thing without stopping than to any other single quality.
Thomas A. Edison
#91. I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.
Thomas A. Edison
#92. 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.
Thomas A. Edison
#93. I don't like Thomas Edison. I'm a fan of Nicolai Tesla.
David Lynch
#94. I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.
Thomas A. Edison
#96. There cannot be overproduction of anything which men and women want. And their wants are unlimited, except by the size of their stomachs.
Thomas A. Edison
#97. I wanted to be an inventor, whatever I thought that meant then. I guess I was thinking of Edison or maybe James Watt. Or maybe even Newton.
David Antin
#99. 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
#100. Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it.
Thomas A. Edison
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