The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.

Nothing that's good works by itself, you've got to make the damn thing work.

Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off... All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.

Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.

Sleep is like a drug. Take too much at a time and it makes you dopey. You lose time and opportunities.

A reporter called on Edison to interview him about a substitute for lead in the manufacture of storage batteries that the scientist was seeking. Edison informed the man that he had made 20,000 experiments but none had worked. "Aren't you discouraged by all this waste of effort?" the reporter asked. Edison: "Waste! There's nothing wasted. I have discovered 20,000 things that won't work."