Thomas Edison

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.
– Thomas Edison

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.
– Thomas Edison

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

If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
– Thomas Edison

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second,
stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.
– Thomas Edison

What you are will show in what you do.
– Thomas Edison

We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.
– Thomas Edison

Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good
imagination and invent something.
– Thomas Edison

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of
the world.
– Thomas Edison

My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions. The
dove is my emblem. I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it. I am proud of
the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill.
– Thomas Edison

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.
– Thomas Edison

The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to
one problem incessantly without growing weary.
– Thomas Edison

I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
– Thomas Edison

As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to
worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work
very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.
– Thomas Edison

Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking all day from one laboratory table to
another. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and
competitors get from playing games like golf.
– Thomas Edison

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.
– Thomas Edison

Our schools are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many young people
have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically to work.
– Thomas Edison

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.
– Thomas Edison

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other
eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
– Thomas Edison

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
– Thomas Edison

Vision without execution is hallucination.
– Thomas Edison

If parents pass enthusiasm along to their children, they will leave them an estate of
incalculable value.
– Thomas Edison

The doctor of the future will give no medication, but will interest his patients in the care of
the human frame, diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.
– Thomas Edison

When you exhaust all possibilities, remember this: You haven’t.
– Thomas Edison

I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person
with a thousand ideas who does nothing.
– Thomas Edison

Everybody steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot myself. But I know how to steal.
– Thomas Edison

I never did a day’s work in my life. It was all fun.
– Thomas Edison

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.
– Thomas Edison

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one
more time.
– Thomas Edison

I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.
– Thomas Edison

I failed my way to success.
– Thomas Edison

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or
accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning,
intelligence and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.
– Thomas Edison

People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but how often they succeed.
– Thomas Edison

Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop
harming all other living beings, we are still savages.
– Thomas Edison

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man’s character.
– Thomas Edison

We have but two ears and one mouth so that we may listen twice as much as we speak.
– Thomas Edison

The value of an idea lies in using it.
– Thomas Edison

Many of life’s failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were
to success when they gave up.
– Thomas Edison

Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each
day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.
– Thomas Edison

There is no substitute for hard work.
– Thomas Edison

There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.
– Thomas Edison

It’s obvious that we don’t know one millionth of one percent about anything.
– Thomas Edison