I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.

Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous . . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe.

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

Youth doesn't take advice.

I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident. . . Almost none of my inventions came about totally by accident. They were achieved by having trained myself to endure and tolerate hard work.

Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.

If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.