My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected - ideas of others.

I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.

What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.

The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.

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.

As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.

My success is due more to my ability to work continuously on one thing without stopping than to any other single quality.