I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 foundations and individual donors whose priorities don't align with my organization's.

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.

I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.

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

I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.

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.

A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die, it will someday be reborn in the mind of another.