Thomas A. Edison
Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.Collection: Inspiration
I have determined that there is no market for talking picturesCollection: Inspiration
There is no subsitute for hard work.Collection: Hard Work
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.Collection: Inspirational
I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.Collection: Inspirational
For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction - faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.Collection: Religious
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.Collection: Motivational
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.Collection: Trials
I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament... Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.Collection: Light
It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.Collection: People
I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.Collection: Inspirational
I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.Collection: Two
The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.Collection: Crazy
The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.Collection: Success
I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill. The dove is my emblem.Collection: Technology
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.Collection: People
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.Collection: Science
I would construct and work along various lines until I found them untenable. When one theory was discarded, I developed another at once. I realized very early that this was the only possible way for me to work out all the problems.Collection: Adventure
Nature made us - nature did it all - not the gods of the religions.Collection: Made
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….Collection: Inspirational
Show me a completely contented person and I'll show you a failure.Collection: Failure
I start where the last man left off. What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve.Collection: Believe
I am 67, but I'm not too old to make a fresh start.Collection: Life
My mother was the making of me. She was so true and so sure of me, I felt that I had someone to live for - someone I must not disappoint. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.Collection: Mom
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.Collection: Motivational
Being busy does not always mean real work.Collection: Real
A failure teaches you that something can't be done-that way.Collection: Failure
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.Collection: Motivational
We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.Collection: Self Confidence
I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.Collection: Education
Sleep is like a drug. Take too much at a time and it makes you dopey. You lose time and opportunities.Collection: Sleep
I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life - our desire to go on living - our dread of coming to an end.Collection: Atheist
I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.Collection: Men
There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.Collection: Business
I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.Collection: Inspirational
I've realized that most of my best ideas have followed a good night's sleep.Collection: Good Night
I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Memories
Nothing that's good works by itself, you've got to make the damn thing work.Collection: Good Work
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.Collection: Motivational
I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.Collection: Religious
An idea is something that won't work unless you do.Collection: Ideas
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.Collection: Spiritual
The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease. ~Collection: Life