Thomas Alva Edison Quotes

Thomas Alva Edison (February 11, 1847 – October 18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. Edison developed many devices that greatly influenced life around the world, including the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and a long-lasting, practical electric light bulb.
Dubbed "The Wizard of Menlo Park" (now Edison, New Jersey) by a newspaper reporter, he was one of the first inventors to apply the principles of mass production and large teamwork to the process of invention, and therefore is often credited with the creation of the first industrial research laboratory. Edison is the fourth most prolific inventor in history, holding 1,093 US patents in his name, as well as many patents in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany.
Selected Quotes of Thomas Alva Edison

1. I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
    
2. Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.
    
3. Vision without execution is hallucination.
    
4. The value of an idea lies in using it.
    
5. There is no substitute for hard work.
    
6. I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.
    
7. Genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework.
    
8. Inspiration can be found in a pile of junk. Sometimes, you can put it together with a good imagination and invent something.
    
9. Our schools are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many young people have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically to work.
    
10. 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.
     
11. Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.
     
12. If parents pass enthusiasm along to their children, they will leave them an estate of incalculable value.
     
13. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.
     
14. I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.
     
15. I readily absorb ideas from every source, frequently starting where the last person left off.
     
16. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
     
17. Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.
     
18. As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.
     
19. The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.
     
20. Time is really the only capital that any human being has and the thing that he can least afford to waste or lose.
     
21. I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.
     
22. I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident.... Almost none of my inventions were derived in that manner. They were achieved by having trained myself to be analytical and to endure and tolerate hard work.
     
23. If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
     
24. I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing.
     
25. Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.
     
26. My main purpose in life is to make enough money to create ever more inventions.... The dove is my emblem.... I want to save and advance human life, not destroy it.... I am proud of the fact that I have never invented weapons to kill.
     
27. I am both pleased but astonished by the fact that mankind has not yet begun to use all the means and devices that are available for destruction. I hope that such weapons are never manufactured in quantity.
     
28. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it might give others... I find out what the world needs, then I proceed to invent.
     
29. The United States, and other advanced nations, will someday be able to produce instruments of death so terrible the world will be in abject terror of itself and its ability to end civilization.... Such war-making weapons should be developed - but only for purposes of discovery and experimentation.
     
30. We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature’s inexhaustible sources of energy--sun, wind and tide. I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
     
31. Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don't work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they'll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they'll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they've got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.
     
32. 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.