Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It's their 'ideas' that appeal to me. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor

I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting...not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.

I start where the last man left off.

We haven't failed. We now know a thousand things that won't work, so we are much closer to finding what will.

I would construct and work along various lines until I found them untenable. When one theory was discarded, I developed another at once. I realized very early that this was the only possible way for me to work out all the problems.