M. A. Rosanoff: Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe. Edison: There ain’t no rules around here. We’re trying to accomplish somep’n!
If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.
There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.
There is no substitute for hard work.
Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.
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.
Never be discouraged. Every wrong attempt left behind is another step forward, bringing you closer to your goals.
The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.
I love great music and art, but I think ‘cubist’ songs and paintings are hideous.
Even though I am nearly deaf, I seem to be gifted with a kind of inner hearing which enables me to detect sounds and noises which the ordinary person does not hear.
I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No when I have fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.
There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start anew.
I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.
The entity that gives life and motion to the human body is finer still and lies infinitely beyond the reach of our finest scientific instruments. When this entity deserts the body, the body is like a ship without a rudder – deserted, motionless, dead.
The stomach is the only part of man which can be fully satisfied. The yearning of man’s brain for new knowledge and experience and for more pleasant and comfortable surroundings never can be completely met. It is an appetite which cannot be appeased.
Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking around laboratory tables all day. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends and competitors get from playing games like golf.
Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.
The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.
Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.
In creating technology for ourselves we created it for the world.