Thomas A. Edison Quotes

Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition.

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

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.

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 .

We haven't failed. We now know a thousand things that won't work, so we are much closer to finding what will.

People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.

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.

Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.

Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I've stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don't know how to steal!

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.

You can't realize your dreams unless you have one to begin with.

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.

There is always a better way.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.

Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.

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.

I start where the last man left off.

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.

I get my ideas from listening from within.

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.

It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges, at the hands of men, who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

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!

The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.

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 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.

Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.

To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.

First be sure a thing is wanted or needed, then go ahead.

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.

Having a vision for what you want is not enough...Vision without execution is hallucination

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

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.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

There is time for everything.

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.

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.

There cannot be overproduction of anything which men and women want. And their wants are unlimited, except by the size of their stomachs.

Failure is the most effective technique to optimize strategic planning, implementation and processes.

Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.

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."

I am 67, but I'm not too old to make a fresh start.

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy - sun, wind and tide. ... 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.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith and go forward.

Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!