Thomas A. Edison Quotes

Surprises and reverses can serve as an incentive for great accomplishment. There are no rules here, we're just trying to accomplish something.

I have not failed 10,000 times. I have succeeded in proving that those 10,000 ways will not work.

I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

Success is the product of the severest kind of mental and physical application.

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions…. The dove is my emblem…. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it…. I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill….

Barring serious accidents, if you are not preoccupied with worry and you work hard, you can look forward to a reasonably lengthy existence.... Its not the hard work that kills, its the worrying that kills.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 foundations and individual donors whose priorities don't align with my organization's.

I'll try anything...I'll even try Limburger cheese!

Sticking to it is the genius.

My mother was the making of me.

We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries - discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .

Do the thing and the power will come.

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

The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.

When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.

I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'

An average American loves his family. If he has any love left over for some other person, he generally selects Mark Twain.

I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

The biggest failure of man is that he gives up before he realizes how close he was to success.

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.

It is the best book ever written on the subject. There is nothing like it!

The inventor can't do it all, you've got to change people. We have an enormous capacity to invent super-machinery. But our desire to install the device is weak. Human inertia is the problem, not invention. Something in man makes him resist change.

Nature is truly wonderful. Only man is truly foul.

The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.

Books will soon be obsolete in the schools... Our school system will be completely changed in the next ten years.

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

What you are will show in what you do.

To those searching for truth -- not the truth of dogma and darkness but the truth brought by reason, search, examination, and inquiry, discipline is required. For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction -- faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.

Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.

We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

I have always consistently opposed high-tension and alternating systems of electric lighting...not only on account of danger, but because of their general unreliability and unsuitability for any general system of distribution.

I never knew I had an inventive talent until Phrenology told me so. I was a stranger to myself until then!

We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

Interest is the invention of Satan.

The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.

Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation - rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.

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

Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.

I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of.

The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.

Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.

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.