Thomas Edison Quotes

59 Sourced Quotes

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

Thomas Edison
Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Edison
We tried some experiments in mind reading which were not very successful. Think mind reading contrary to common sense, wise provision of the Bon Dieu that we cannot read each others minds, twould stop civilization and everybody would take to the woods. In fifty or hundred thousand centuries when mankind have become perfect by evolution then perhaps this sense could be developed with safety to the state.

Thomas Edison
I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.
Variant: I find out what the world needs; then I go ahead and try to invent it,

Thomas Edison
After being asked by M. A. Rosanoff what laboratory rules Edison want him to observe:
Hell, there are no rules here — we're trying to accomplish something.

Thomas Edison
Smoking too much makes me nervous. Must lasso my natural tendency to acquire such habits. Holding heavy cigar constantly in my mouth has deformed my upper lip, it has a sort of Havana curl.

Thomas Edison
Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. … All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.

Thomas Edison
The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if on will only take the pains to train the mind to think.

Thomas Edison
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.

Thomas Edison
Perhaps dandruff is the excreta of the mind — the quantity of this material being directly proportional to the amount of reading one indulges in. A book on German metaphysics would thus easily ruin a dress suit.

Thomas Edison
Genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration.

Thomas Edison
The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty — who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause — can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.

Thomas Edison
For most of my life I refused to work at any problem unless its solution seemed to be capable of being put to commercial use.

Thomas Edison
Fooling around with alternating current's just a waste of time. Nobody'll ever use it. Too dangerous!

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

Thomas Edison
The roots of tobacco plants must go clear through to hell.

Thomas Edison
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

Thomas Edison
In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.

Thomas Edison
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

Thomas Edison
I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.

Thomas Edison
If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. … It is absurd to say our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.

Thomas Edison
Ninety eight per cent of genius is hard work. As for genius being inspired, inspiration is in most cases another word for perspiration.

Thomas Edison
When I want to discover something, I begin by reading up everything that has been done along that line in the past — that's what all these books in the library are for. I see what has been accomplished at great labor and expense in the past. I gather the data of many thousands of experiments as a starting point, and then I make a thousand more.

Thomas Edison
The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.

Thomas Edison
I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it.

Thomas Edison