“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 A. Edison
“The first requisite for success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem incessantly without growing weary.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“There are no rules here -- we're trying to accomplish something.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I have always regarded Paine as one of the greatest of all Americans. Never have we had a sounder intelligence in this republic ... It was my good fortune to encounter Thomas Paine's works in my boyhood ... it was, indeed, a revelation to me to read that great thinker's views on political and theological subjects. Paine educated me, then, about many matters of which I had never before thought. I remember, very vividly, the flash of enlightenment that shone from Paine's writings, and I recall thinking, at that time, 'What a pity these works are not today the schoolbooks for all children!' My interest in Paine was not satisfied by my first reading of his works. I went back to them time and again, just as I have done since my boyhood days.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake ... Religion is all bunk.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It should be the primary purpose of our public schools. The mind of a child is naturally active, it develops through exercise. Give a child plenty of exercise, for body and brain. The trouble with our way of educating is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mold. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought or reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I have never failed, I've only shown the way I did it before doesn't work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“When Thomas Edison’s factory burned to the ground in 1914, destroying one-of-a-kind prototypes and causing $23 million in damage, Edison’s response was simple:
"Thank goodness all our mistakes were burned up. Now we can start fresh again.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the real labor of thinking.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Opportunity is often missed because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
