I never failed. It just didn't work 10,000 times.

X-rays ... I am afraid of them. I stopped experimenting with them two years ago, when I came near to losing my eyesight and Dally, my assistant practically lost the use of both of his arms.

It is very different to make a practical system and to introduce it. A few experiments in the laboratory would prove the practicability of system long before it could be brought into general use. You can take a pipe and put a little coal in it, close it up, heat it and light the gas that comes out of the stem, but that is not introducing gas lighting. I'll bet that if it were discovered to-morrow in New York that gas could be made out of coal it would be at least five years before the system would be in general use.

I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.

I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.

Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it.

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.