Guide To Rare And Old Book Values

Thomas Alva Edison Quotes

(1847-1931)

Copyright  2002-2007, Fadedgiant™. All rights reserved.

Legal Notice and Privacy Policy

Famous quotes by Thomas Edison

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

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.
- Thomas Edison

There is time for everything.
- Thomas Edison

There is no substitute for hard work.
- Thomas Edison

Our goal is peace, and preparedness is the road to it.
- Thomas Edison

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

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.
- Thomas Edison

I would like to live about three hundred years. I think I have ideas enough to keep me busy that long.
- Thomas Edison

If I were a school teacher, I would put lazy pupils to studying bees and ants. They would soon learn to be diligent.
- Thomas Edison

A nation can be only as great as the greatest number of its people.
- Thomas Edison

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.
- Thomas Edison

Everything comes to him that hustles while he waits.
- Thomas Edison

A man's best friend is a good wife.
- Thomas Edison

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

From his neck down, a man is worth a couple of dollars a day. From his neck up, he is worth anything that his brain can produce.
- Thomas Edison

The greatest strides that have been made for the benefit of humanity in the present century have been in the fields of surgery and medicine.
- Thomas Edison

A man is as happy as his feet and his stomach.
- Thomas Edison

The thing with which I lose patience most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.
- Thomas Edison

The only time I become discouraged is when I think of all the things I like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.
- Thomas Edison

Of all my inventions, I like the phonograph the best.
- Thomas Edison

Genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.
- Thomas Edison

We don't know one millionth of one percent about anything.
- Thomas Edison

There's a better way to do it. Find it.
- Thomas Edison

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
- Thomas Edison

I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.
- Thomas Edison

Inventing the Future: A Photobiography of Thomas Alva Edison by Marfe Ferguson Delano, David Edward Edison Sloane (Foreword)

Thomas Edison’s 1,093 patented inventions include the light bulb, the phonograph, and significant contributions to the fields of photography and filmmaking and to what ultimately would become the national power grid. Edison’s gritty way of persevering—working ’round the clock with many assistants, catnapping on his lab table, trying things over and over again until he finally made a breakthrough—gave birth to the modern research laboratory, where hypotheses are proposed and then tested. Combining lively text, rare period photographs, and Edison’s own words, Delano paints a memorable portrait of this prolific American genius. The foreword by Edison’s great-grandson adds a personal note to this exciting American success story that will spark kids’ interest in science and inspire a new generation of inventors.

Edison: Inventing the Century by Neil Baldwin

From Booklist: The Wizard of Menlo Park always attracted a great deal of press and biographical attention because his inventions--the lightbulb, microphone, phonograph, moving pictures--appeared nigh miraculous. Edison himself hated the Merlin-like moniker, claiming only to have been a diligent man. Baldwin agrees he was--and reports that at 65, Thomas Alva Edison worked a 112-hour week. Domestically, Edison was not so successful. Thomas Jr. became so estranged from his celebrated father that he dropped the surname and skulked about under various aliases. And Edison cut off relations with a daughter who had married an officer in the kaiser's army. Was Edison a flawed father or titanic exemplar of self-made individualism? Baldwin eschews categorical conclusions and rather invites the curious into Edison's homes, labs, and factories where they can make their own inspection. Libraries without any Edison biography (the last, by Wyn Wachhorst, is 15 years old and o.p.) should seriously consider this one, completely researched and ably executed. Gilbert Taylor