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It’s necessary to be slightly underemployed if you are to do something significant. —JAMES WATSON, CO-DISCOVERER OF DNA
“I will begin by stating the obvious,” said Martin with a commanding voice. “Our guest of honor does not want to be here.”
Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. —THOMAS EDISON
We’re not going to be the first to this party, but we’re going to be the best. —STEVE JOBS
America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men. —ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL
Gas lamps hung along the walls and washed the cavernous space with a pale orange light. Westinghouse’s engineers feared that electric lights might interfere with their tests on new light-bulb designs. The newest colors on the market—the softest yellows, the wispiest fading whites, the lightest bursting sun flares—were developed here. The colors of the future had to be examined in the dim past.
Having a better system than Edison’s would do no good if they couldn’t explain to the public why it was better. Reality mattered not at all; perception was the whole of business. Edison had realized this before they had. While Westinghouse was using Tesla’s discoveries to develop a superior product, Edison had skipped straight to developing a superior story.
That’s how business works.” “The workings of your business,” said Tesla, “are not to be found listed in the catalogues of my concerns.”
“What do you make?” he asked Tesla. “Thoughts,” answered Tesla, as if speaking to a child. “I have thoughts. And my imaginings, they will last longer and drive deeper into the next centuries than shall your fragile toys.” “The many things that I have built will last for ages.” “No, Mr. George Westinghouse. Buildings are ephemeral. It is ideas that last forever.”
The way Paul thought of it, if you asked him a question, he was exceptionally good at providing the right answer. But he wasn’t the sort of person who came up with the questions.
Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits. —THOMAS EDISON
No experiments are wasted. —THOMAS EDISON
you seek only to maintain the present state of affairs. He seeks to change them. As such, no action is, for us, victory.” It was not lost on Paul that this was essentially true of his other client as well. His expertise was to be in creative delays. He felt this was reasonable. Who had ever hired an attorney in the hopes of speeding a matter along?
