The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast

I have not failed. I have successfully discovered 1200 ideas that don't work.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

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 told [Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted "Mary had a little lamb," etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly. On first words spoken on a phonograph.

Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation - rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.

The perils of overwork are slight compared with the dangers of inactivity.