“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 never failed, I've only shown the way I did it before doesn't work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“When Thomas Edison’s factory burned to the ground in 1914, destroying one-of-a-kind prototypes and causing $23 million in damage, Edison’s response was simple:
"Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start fresh again.”
―
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 have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
―
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
“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
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
―
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
“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
“I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it”
―
Thomas A. Edison
