Edison Thomas Quotes & Sayings

Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear. — Thomas A. Edison

We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy
sun, wind and tide. I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that. — Thomas A. Edison

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

A man's best friend is a good wife. — Thomas A. Edison

There's a way to do it better - find it. — Thomas A. Edison

The money one gets for selling one's soul is always spent in deadening one's conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck. — Thomas A. Edison

If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor. — Nikola Tesla

The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn't like to do. — Thomas A. Edison

I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun. — Thomas A. Edison

Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy. — Thomas A. Edison

We owe a lot to Thomas Edison-if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight. — Milton Berle

There is a better way for everything. Find it. — Thomas A. Edison

Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best — Thomas A. Edison

I came from Paris in the Spring of 1884, and was brought in intimate contact with him [Thomas Edison]. We experimented day and night, holidays not excepted. His existence was made up of alternate periods of work and sleep in the laboratory. He had no hobby, cared for no sport or amusement of any kind and lived in utter disregard of the most elementary rules of hygiene. There can be no doubt that, if he had not married later a woman of exceptional intelligence, who made it the one object of her life to preserve him, he would have died many years ago from consequences of sheer neglect. So great and uncontrollable was his passion for work. — Nikola Tesla

I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds. All bibles are man-made. — Thomas A. Edison

It is the best book ever written on the subject. There is nothing like it! — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

The availability of cheap effective lighting alone, following Thomas Edison's invention of the incandescent bulb in 1879, greatly extended the range of waking human consciousness, effectively adding more hours onto the day - for work, for entertainment, for study, for discovery, for consumption. Subsequently, one development led to another, and to yet another, fueled by a corporate economy in developed nations, and then later by the arms race, and then the space race, as human ambition literally outgrew the planet. It seemed that there was no limit on what humanity could achieve. But there was a flaw at the heart of that expansive optimism - namely, that humanity cannot exist as a thing apart from nature; it has no destiny but annihilation apart from the land that gave it birth. — Clark Strand

Thomas Edison dreamed of a lamp that could be operated by electricity, began where he stood to put his dream into action, and despite more than ten thousand failures, he stood by that dream until he made it a physical reality. Practical dreamers do not quit! — Napoleon Hill

Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don't work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they'll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they'll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they've got it half right, because eventually they do wake up. — Thomas A. Edison

I do not believe any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States. — Thomas A. Edison

The perils of overwork are slight compared with the dangers of inactivity. — Thomas A. Edison

Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

I've always said Thomas Edison invented the movie camera to show people killing and kissing. — Quentin Tarantino

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. — Thomas A. Edison

preserving the essence, in fact the breath - when it opened, his museum displayed Thomas Edison's last exhalation, captured by his son in a test tube at Ford's request - of a more durable American experience. — Greg Grandin

One of my other nicknames was Thomas Edison, because I invented so many moves. — Earl Monroe

[In any] machine, the failure of one part to cooperate properly with the other part disorganizes the whole and renders it inoperative for the purpose intended. - THOMAS EDISON R — Graham Moore

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others ... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent. — Thomas A. Edison

Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. — Thomas A. Edison

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

Nobody knows whether our personalities pass on to another existence or sphere, but if we can evolve an instrument so delicate to be manipulated by our personality as it survives in the next life such an instrument ought to record something ... — Thomas A. Edison

The value of an idea lies in the using of it. — Thomas A. Edison

There is no limit to which a man will not go to avoid thinking. — Thomas A. Edison

Large portions of life's disappointments are individuals who did not understand that they were so near achievement when they surrendered. — Thomas A. Edison

If I had not had so much ambition and not tried to do so many things, I probably would have been happier, but less useful. — Thomas A. Edison

I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days. — Thomas A. Edison

Many of the products which create a modern standard of living are only the physical incorporations of ideas- not only the ideas of an Edison or a Ford but the ideas of innumerable anonymous people who figure out the design of supermarkets, the location of gasoline stations, and the million mundane things on which our material well-being depends. Societies which have more people carrying out physical acts and fewer people supplying ideas do not have higher standards of living. Quite the contrary. — Thomas Sowell

Life's most soothing things are a child's goodnight and sweet music. — Thomas A. Edison

Oh these mathematicians make me tired! When you ask them to work out a sum they take a piece of paper, cover it with rows of A's, B's, and X's and Y's ... scatter a mess of flyspecks over them, and then give you an answer that's all wrong! — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character. — Thomas A. Edison

Ask a Soviet engineer to design a pair of shoes and he'll come up with something that looks like the boxes that the shoes came in; ask him to make something that will massacre Germans, and he turns into Thomas Fucking Edison. — Neal Stephenson

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. — Thomas A. Edison

What a man's mind can create, man's character can control. — Thomas A. Edison

This problem, once solved, will be simple. — Thomas A. Edison

I was really proud that I was named after Thomas Edison and wanted to be called Edson. I thought Pele sounded horrible. It was a rubbish name. Edson sounded so much more serious and important. — Pele

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge. — Thomas A. Edison

Accomplishing something provides the only real satisfaction in life. — Thomas A. Edison

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense. — Thomas A. Edison

Problems in human engineering will receive during the coming years the same genius and attention which the nineteenth century gave to the more material forms of engineering.
We have laid good foundations for industrial prosperity, now we want to assure the happiness and growth of the workers through vocational education, vocational guidance, and wisely managed employment departments. A great field for industrial experimentation and statemanship is opening up. — Thomas A. Edison

After we had conducted thousands of experiments on a certain project without solving the problem, one of my associates, after we had conducted the crowning experiment and it had proved a failure, expressed discouragement and disgust over our having failed to find out anything. I cheerily assured him that we had learned something. For we had learned for a certainty that the thing couldnt be done that way, and that we would have to try some other way. — Thomas A. Edison

If you want to succeed, get some enemies. — Thomas Edison

To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

Somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble, I should judge, to lie with the schools. — Thomas A. Edison

There are no rules here
we're trying to accomplish something. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill. — Thomas A. Edison

Sticking to it is the genius. — Thomas A. Edison

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary. — Thomas A. Edison

My first hero was Thomas Edison, whose adult life had consisted entirely of free time. — Jonathan Franzen

Without doubt, Thomas Edison is my greatest contemporary. — Henry Ford

Unfortunately, there seems to be far more opportunity out there than ability ... We should remember that good fortune often happens when opportunity meets with preparation. — Thomas A. Edison

The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen. Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future. — Thomas A. Edison

I consider myself an inventor first and an entrepreneur second. In real life, my hero is Thomas Edison. He was a great inventor, but also an outstanding entrepreneur who was able to sell his inventions to the masses. He didn't just develop the light bulb; he invented the entire electric grid and power distribution system. — Aaron Patzer

I have had a lot of success with failure — Thomas A. Edison

Friendship is the heaven of life. — Thomas A. Edison

Because I readily absorb ideas from every source - frequently starting where the last person left off - I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. — Thomas A. Edison

No Such Thing as Bad Results — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

I don't like Thomas Edison. I'm a fan of Nicolai Tesla. — David Lynch

I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe. — Thomas A. Edison

I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did. — Steve Jobs

He [Thomas Edison] considered [money] as a raw material, like metal, to be used rather than amassed, and so he kept plowing his funds into new projects. Several times he was all but bankrupt. But he refused to let dollar signs govern his actions. — Charles Edison

The radio craze will die out in time. — Thomas A. Edison

Everything comes to those who hustle while they wait. — Thomas A. Edison

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world. — Thomas A. Edison

There's a poster with Thomas Edison's quote: GENIUS IS 1 PERCENT INSPIRATION AND 99 PERCENT PERSPIRATION. — Lauren Oliver

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine. — Thomas A. Edison

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

The only thing I use my body for is to carry my brain around. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child. — Thomas A. Edison

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. — Thomas A. Edison

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

Never go to sleep
without a request to your subconscious. — Thomas A. Edison

Edison was by far the most successful and, probably, the last exponent of the purely empirical method of investigation. Everything he achieved was the result of persistent trials and experiments often performed at random but always attesting extraordinary vigor and resource. Starting from a few known elements, he would make their combinations and permutations, tabulate them and run through the whole list, completing test after test with incredible rapidity until he obtained a clue. His mind was dominated by one idea, to leave no stone unturned, to exhaust every possibility. — Nikola Tesla

Thomas Edison was not, Paul thought, the first man to become rich by inventing something clever. Rather, he was the first man to build a factory for harnessing cleverness. — Graham Moore

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! — Thomas A. Edison

You only fail when you stop trying. — Thomas Edison

It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought. — Thomas A. Edison

The dove is my emblem. — Thomas A. Edison

During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. — Thomas A. Edison

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil. — Thomas A. Edison

I was at the foot of my class. — Thomas A. Edison

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation. — Thomas A. Edison