Watson, ... if I can get a mechanism which will make a current of electricity vary in its intensity, as the air varies in density when a sound is passing through it, I can telegraph any sound, even the sound of speech.

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with - a man is what he makes of himself.

One day every major city in America will have a telephone.

The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

It is the man who carefully advances step by step...who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! … I have been able to hear a shadow, and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disk.