The quotations of

Thomas Edison

American inventor and businessman

1847–1931

29 quotes, most often on Success, Work and Motivation & Goals. Part of the Entrepreneurs and Scientists collections.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), p. 110
- Success
It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
- Work
We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.
- Education
If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.
- Ideas
To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
- Technology
Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.
The value of an idea lies in the using of it.
- Ideas
Great ideas originate in the muscles.
- Ideas
Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge.
- Science
I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom. Seventy-five of us worked twenty hours every day and slept only four hours — and thrived on it.
Diary entry, as quoted in Defending and Parenting Children Who Learn Differently : Lessons from Edison’s Mother (2007) by Scott Teel, p. 12
- Success
- Work
I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.
The Freethinker (1970), G.W. Foote & Company, Volume 90, p. 147
- God
During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple.
On his research for the electric light bulb, as quoted in “Talks with Edison” by George Parsons Lathrop, Harper’s Magazine, Vol. 80 (February 1890)
- Science
- Technology
I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.
The Philosophy of Paine (1925)
- America
- Politics

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