Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something.

An average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.

Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.

A reporter called on Edison to interview him about a substitute for lead in the manufacture of storage batteries that the scientist was seeking. Edison informed the man that he had made 20,000 experiments but none had worked. "Aren't you discouraged by all this waste of effort?" the reporter asked. Edison: "Waste! There's nothing wasted. I have discovered 20,000 things that won't work."

I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favor compared with the products of nature, the living cell of the plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.

The entity that gives life and motion to the human body is finer still and lies infinitely beyond the reach of our finest scientific instruments. When this entity deserts the body, the body is like a ship without a rudder - deserted, motionless, dead.