Thomas A. Edison > Quotes

“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
― 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

“Five percent of the people think;
ten percent of the people think they think;
and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“If we all did the things we are capable of, we would astound ourselves.”
― 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

“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

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this - you haven't.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Vision without execution is hallucination.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
― 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

“What you are will show in what you do.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“There are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something.”
― 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

“Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“i never did a day’s work in my life. it was all fun.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“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. ~ ”
― Thomas A. Edison

“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

“There is no substitute for hard work.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.”
― 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

“We have but two ears and one mouth so that we may listen twice as much as we speak”
― Thomas A. Edison

“There is time for everything.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.”
― 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

“There is always a better way.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“This problem, once solved, will be simple.”
― Thomas A. Edison

“Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
― Thomas A. Edison