Alexander Graham Bell Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

Alexander Graham Bell
Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

Alexander Graham Bell
The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. That intellectuality is more vigorous that has attained its strength gradually. It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider — and progressively better able to grasp any theme or situation — persevering in what he knows to be practical, and concentrating his thought upon it, who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

Alexander Graham Bell
I dare say you have all heard of that celebrated painter who would never allow any one to mix his colors for him. He always insisted on doing that himself, and at last one of his students. whose curiosity had been aroused. said: "Professor, what do you mix your colors with?" "With brains, sir," said the professor. Now. that is what we have to do with our observations.

Alexander Graham Bell
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with — a man is what he makes of himself.

Alexander Graham Bell
To my mind, the "Evolutionary Hypothesis" tends to weaken belief in the "immortality of personal consciousness" by revealing a cause for the growth of such an idea quite independently of its truth.

Alexander Graham Bell
Find out what an odor is - whether it is an emanation and therefore subject to being weighed, or a vibration and therefore capable of being reflected. Odors are becoming more and more important in the worlds of scientific experiments and in medicine - and the need of more knowledge will bring forth more knowledge, as sure as the sun shines.

Alexander Graham Bell
I am a believer in unconscious cerebration. The brain is working all the time, though we do not know it. At night it follows up what we think in the daytime. When I have worked a long time on one thing, I make it a point to bring all the facts regarding it together before I retire; I have often been surprised at the results... We are thinking all the time; it is impossible not to think.

Alexander Graham Bell
If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed.

Alexander Graham Bell
What is an odor? Is it an emanation of material particles into the air, or is it a form of vibration like sound? If you can decide that, it might be the starting point for a new investigation. If it is an emanation, you might be able to weigh it; and if it is a vibration, you should be able to reflect it from a mirror.

Alexander Graham Bell
Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years.

Alexander Graham Bell
The inventor... looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.

Alexander Graham Bell
'Grand telegraphic discovery today...Transmitted for the first time...With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish...the 'timbre' of the sound. Should this be so, conversation by telegraph will be a.'

Alexander Graham Bell
A great many small things make a big one. Any one, if he will only observe, can find some little thing he does not understand as a starter for an investigation.

Alexander Graham Bell
There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

Alexander Graham Bell
Whenever you can measure a phenomenon you have a basis upon which may be built a science; in fact, all science is dependent upon measurement.

Alexander Graham Bell
I begin my work at about nine or ten o'clock in the evening and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.

Alexander Graham Bell
You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.

Alexander Graham Bell
I have often thought I should like to go on the banks of Newfoundland and fish with a telephone. If you were to send the transmitter down among the codfish with the bait, perhaps you would find something there to hear. I have never tried it. I will leave that to you.

Alexander Graham Bell
'Watson,...if I can get a mechanism which will make a current of electricity vary in its intensity, as the air varies in density when a sound is passing through it, I can telegraph any sound, even the sound of speech.'

Alexander Graham Bell
Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. Follow it up. explore all round it; one discovery will lead to another, and before you know it you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind. All really big discoveries are the results of thought.

Alexander Graham Bell
Perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums.

Alexander Graham Bell
Did you ever try to measure a smell? Can you tell whether one smell is just twice as strong as another. Can you measure the difference between one kind of smell and another. It is very obvious that we have very many different kinds of smells, all the way from the odor of violets and roses up to asafetida. But until you can measure their likenesses and differences you can have no science of odor. If you are ambitions to found a new science, measure a smell.

Alexander Graham Bell
When I was invited to talk to you tonight I had no idea of what to say. I thought of all the good maxims for your future conduct in life; but giving advice to young people is out of my line, and it seemed to be better to choose some subject with which I was a little familiar myself. How discoveries and inventions arise from the observation of little things is surely a topic worthy of your consideration. I also thought it would be interesting for you to know how many apparently impossible results have been actually achieved by the patient multiplication of little observations.

Alexander Graham Bell