A Quote by Thomas A. Edison

Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it. — © Thomas A. Edison
Before you reject an idea, find at least five good things about it.
As long as there's a place for sundials and gardening and beautiful things, there's a place for the harpsichord. I completely reject the idea that harpsichord is old. And I reject the idea that something old is therefore not good or not popular. Lots of things are old. Lots of traditions are old - cooking, art. I like it because it's beautiful.
The point of Silicon Valley at least when I moved here was we're all trying to do stuff and none of us quite felt like we fit in anywhere else. But we were all trying to do good things. And the money was just the byproduct of good things. The idea that there's an obligation to have that thing happen in four years or five years or six years, I think we need to disavow that.
We believe that almost all really good investment records will involve relatively little diversification. The basic idea that it was hard to find good investments and that you wanted to be in good investments, and therefore, you'd just find a few of them that you knew a lot about and concentrate on those seemed to me such an obviously good idea. And indeed, it's proven to be an obviously good idea. Yet 98% of the investing world doesn't follow it. That's been good for us.
There are two things that have to happen before an idea catches on. One is that the idea should be good. The other is that it should fit in with the temper of the age. If it does not, even a good idea may well be passed by.
Reject labels. Reject identities. Reject conformity. Reject convention. Reject definitions. Reject names.
I'm still living at least five parallel lives, honestly! I wonder about it. I have no idea how that happens.
If I'm ever working on a set and anyone talks about a master shot, I say there is no master shot. Before I even went to film school, I learned about movies by being in a British feature film, where everything was shot master shot, mid-shot, close-up. But I reject the idea of a master shot. You don't shoot everything mechanically; you find imaginative ways that serve the action.
I ended up writing songs and growing up in public with my songwriting. And it's a good thing for me back then: in the early '70s, there was a thing called artist development, where an artist could find his feet, find himself, find his voice. I think I made five or six albums before I sold five or six albums.
Great people do things before they're ready. They do things before they know they can do it. Doing what you're afraid of, getting out of your comfort zone, taking risks like that - that is what life is. You might be really good. You might find out something about yourself that's really special and if you're not good, who cares? You tried something. Now you know something about yourself.
I guess the best thing about having a successful record like this is, like, I know I'm at least good for another five years, like, before everyone starts to like - all the haters start to come out again. And that's really what it is.
No man should kill himself as long as he can be of the least use to anybody, and if you cannot find some person that you are willing to do something for, find a good dog and take care of him. You have no idea how much better you will feel.
I was fortunate that I was at newspapers for eight years, where I wrote at least five or six stories every week. You get used to interviewing lots of different people about a lot of different things. And they aren't things you know about until you do the story.
I have one very basic rule when it comes to "good ideas". A good idea is not an idea that solves a problem cleanly. A good idea is an idea that solves several things at the same time. The mark of good coding is not that the program does what you want, it's that it also does something that you didn't start out wanting.
I can't remember ever being really bored. I find life very interesting, actually. I think some other musicians are always looking for something to give them an idea, but I find I have to reject 90 percent of my ideas because they don't live up to some self-imposed standard. That's also why I don't make a record once a year. I throw so many things out, and I have to have something to say.
You could reduce people's fears if you gave them some useful information before things went wrong. It's really important to create a sense of confidence in the public in their own abilities before a disaster because they're the only ones who are going to be there. No one's going to help you for at least 24 to 72 hours. So it would be good to know more about it.
As soon as you think of fishing you think of things that don't belong to the modern world. The very idea of sitting all day under a willow tree beside a quiet pool - and being able to find a quiet pool to sit beside- belongs to a time before the war, before radio, before aeroplanes, before Hitler.
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