Top 351 Quotes & Sayings by Thomas A. Edison - Page 2

When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this - you haven't.

Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.

I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.

I never quit until I get what I want.

Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition.

Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it.

I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.

Never Say I Failed 99 Times, Say I Discovered 99 Ways Which Causes Failure!

There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking. Thinking is hard work.

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.

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

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man - and I will show you a failure.

Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.

Remember, life is all what you focus on. Learn lessons and keep moving forward towards your goals and dreams... "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work."

The biggest failure of man is that he gives up before he realizes how close he was to success.

I failed my way to success.

I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.

The secret of success is focus of purpose.

The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.

Do the thing and the power will come.

Never go to sleep without a request to your subconscious.

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

Tomorrow Is My Exam But I Don’t Care Because A Single Sheet Of Paper Can’t Decide My Future

Be courageous! Have faith! Go forward.

We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.

People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward

A man’s best friend is a good wife.

A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.

Everything comes to those who hustle while they wait.

A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job

A genius is a talented person who does his homework.

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing.

The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.

I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.

A teacher sent the following note home with a six-year-old boy 'He is too stupid to learn.' That boy was Thomas A. Edison.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.

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.

The First 40 hours of work per week are for survival. Everything after that is for success.

Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy.

Mr. Edison worked endlessly on a problem, using the method of elimination. If a person asked him if he were discouraged because so many attempts proved unavailing, he would say, "No, I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.".

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.

I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can't afford to lose.

Each time you fail, you have eliminated another wrong option.

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.

You can't realize your dreams unless you have one to begin with.

Today, I am wondering what would have happened to me by now, if, fifty years ago, some fluent talker had converted me to the theory of the eight-hour day and convinced me that it was not fair to my fellow-workers to put forth my best efforts in my work? I am glad that the eight-hour day had not been invented when I was a young man. If my life had been made up of eight-hour days, I don't believe I could have accomplished a great deal.

Work while others are wishing.

Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.

Success depends on how many experiments you can fit into 24 hours

Success is the result of hard work.

I get my ideas from listening from within.

There is always a better way.

I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.

I have better use for my brain than to poison it with alcohol. To put alcohol in the human brain is like putting sand in the bearings of an engine.

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.

Absorb ideas from every source.