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.
Thomas A. EdisonIt 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.
Thomas A. EdisonSomewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble, I should judge, to lie with the schools.
Thomas A. EdisonI am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.
Thomas A. EdisonI 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.
Thomas A. Edison