“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
“It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
―
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 have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
―
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
“I told [John Kruesi] I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought it absurd. However, it was finished, the foil was put on; I then shouted 'Mary had a little lamb', etc. I adjusted the reproducer, and the machine reproduced it perfectly.
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.”
―
Thomas A. Edison
“I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it”
―
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
“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 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
