A Quote by Thomas A. Edison

I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.

Thomas A. Edison

Quote Topics

Bulb Failed Found Just Light Light Bulb Make Making Never Once Out Ways

Quote Author

Thomas A. Edison
American - Inventor
February 11, 1847 - October 18, 1931

If you don't know a light bulb is a three-way light bulb, it messes with your head. You reach to turn it off, and it just gets brighter! That's the exact opposite of what I wanted you to do! So you turn the switch again, and it gets brighter once more! I will break you, light bulb!

Mitch Hedberg

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

Thomas A. Edison

The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.

Elon Musk

'Don't be the moth. Be the light bulb.' When I say that I mean don't follow the crowd. Just shine. Be the light bulb. Do your thing. Pave your own path.

Sara Paxton

I do a lot of conferences, a lot of leadership training. For about six or seven years I've been making this statement - every time I make it, I can see people just kind of - it's just one of those light bulb moments.

John C. Maxwell

It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today.

Benjamin Carson

Fall forward. Here's what I mean: Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in his career - the most in the history of baseball. But you don't hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward. Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn't either - because number 1,001 was the light bulb. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.

Denzel Washington

I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.

Thomas A. Edison

How many Republicans does it take to change a light bulb? Three. One to mix the martinis, one to change the light bulb, and one to reminisce about how good the old one was.

Christopher Buckley

Writing 'Men We Reaped' broke me in different ways at different spots in the drafting process. The first draft was hard because I was just getting it out. In some ways, that draft failed. I was really just telling the story, not making assessments - this happened, then this. Just putting those facts down on paper was really painful.

Jesmyn Ward

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

Thomas A. Edison

I think for much of the middle classes, nothing could be more fantastic than to have a contact with fame. But once you have that contact with fame and find out how vacuous it is, that it doesn't answer anything or supply any ultimate revelation to cosmic dilemmas and you're still left with yourself, then it's back to the drawing room with fading light and one light bulb out in the very expensive chandelier that no one has bothered to replace.

Lawrence Douglas

[S]uppose you make a hole in an ordinary evacuated electric light bulb and allow the air molecules to pass in at the rate of 1,000,000 a second, the bulb will become full of air in approximately 100,000,000 years.

Francis William Aston

Do you know how much money you would save if you changed your light bulb to compact florescent light bubs? How much would you save if you decreased your temperature of your house in the winter by one degree, or increase it by one degree? We just don't know these numbers, but I think displays could make it a memorable change in terms of attention, and also help us translate it in terms of concrete ways on what you can get.

Dan Ariely

I used to think that once you really knew a thing, its truth would shine on forever. Now it's pretty obvious to me that more often than not the batteries fade, and sometimes what you knew even goes out with a bang when you try and call on it, just like a light bulb cracking off when you throw the switch.