Quotes By Thomas A. Edison

There is far more opportunity than there is ability.

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

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.

They say President Wilson has blundered. Perhaps he has, but I notice he usually blunders forward.

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

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are: Hard work, Stick-to-itiveness, and Common sense.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

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

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

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.

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.

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

His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

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

Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

When I have fully decided that a result is worth getting I go ahead of it and make trial after trial until it comes.

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

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

There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.

What you are will show in what you do.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.