Thomas A. Edison Quotes

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake ... Religion is all bunk.

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

Success is the result of hard work.

No Such Thing as Bad Results

I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.

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.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me - the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love - He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Success is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration!

The Bible of nature is the best damn Bible in the world. Its laws are perfect and grand, and all the prayers in the world can't change them. There is intelligence and law in this world, and there may be supreme intelligence and law, but so far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is all a damned fake.

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.

Be courageous! Have faith! Go forward.

Seeming to do is not doing.

The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest.

Never be discouraged, because every wrong turn attempt, when left behind you, is another step forward taking you closer to your goals.

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking. Thinking is hard work.

I failed my way to success.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. As a result, a genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework.

Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used used them.

It is apparent to me that the possibilities of the aeroplane, which two or three years ago were thought to hold the solution to the [flying machine] problem, have been exhausted, and that we must turn elsewhere.

From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.

Invention is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration

If there is a better solution... find it.

I've never made a mistake. I've only learned from experience.

The great trouble is that the preachers get the children from six to seven years of age and then it is almost impossible to do anything with them.

When you become quiet, it just dawns on you

Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

The value of a good idea is in using it.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.

Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp.

A failure teaches you that something can't be done-that way.

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

The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will involve the patient in the proper use of food, fresh air and exercise

When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orangutans. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh, no! We burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property.

The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.

I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.

If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People.