“I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
―
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
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
―
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
“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it”
―
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
“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“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.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
