Alexander Graham Bell Quotes

24 Sourced Quotes

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