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

I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.

Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best

Two per cent. is genius, and ninety-eight per cent. is hard work.

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.

Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

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