Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best

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 am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.

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.

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.

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 .

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.