Thomas A. Edison Quotes

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

Religion is all bunk.

I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.

Consider data without prejudice.

When you become quiet, it just dawns on you

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.

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

A lawsuit is the suicide of time.

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

I think work is the world's greatest fun.

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

Nature is truly wonderful. Only man is truly foul.

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

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

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.

If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.

The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard work and stick-to-it-iv-ness.

The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.

I didn’t fail ten thousand times. I successfully eliminated, ten thousand times, materials and combinations which wouldn’t work.

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.

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

My main purpose in life is to make money so I can afford to go on creating more inventions.

Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.

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

I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.

Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I've stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don't know how to steal!

I have determined that there is no market for talking pictures

I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.

Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music.

I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.

Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.

My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected - ideas of others.

The dove is my emblem.

I am so deaf I am debarred from hearing all the time articulation and have to depend on the judgment of others.

As Danand Ian over at the Lifestyle Business Podcast say: Rush to failure.

I have been at work for some time building an apparatus to see if it is possible for personalities which have left this earth to communicate with us.

Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous . . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe.

When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.

Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best

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

There is a better way to do it - Find it!

My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it.

There is no subsitute for hard work.

Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.

I was at the foot of my class.

Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people.

Baseball is the greatest of American games. Some say football, but it is my firm belief, and it shall always be, that baseball has no superior.

The radio craze will die out in time.

Youth doesn't take advice.

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