Thomas Edison

What you are will show in what you do.

There will one day come a generation without the fog of ignorance.

Discontent is the first necessity of progress.

I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might be trying to beat me to an invention. It is the actual inventor who is the great man, and not the man who has the name or who writes a book.

The only thing that interferes with my learning is my education.

Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religion. We are that and nothing more.

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward, but this is not so. The only real value is the inventor’s satisfaction.

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

The most necessary task of civilization is to teach people how to think. It is to think straight all the time.

Hell! There ain't no rules around here! We're trying to accomplish something!

I never view work as a hardship because it is my pleasure to work.

Great inventions come from ideas that are simple, but the execution is complex.

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

The way to succeed is to double your error rate.

My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls wise men fools.

The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.

Success is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration.

I never quit until I get what I'm after.

The biggest job we have is to teach a newly hired employee how to fail intelligently. We have to train him to experiment over and over and to keep on trying and failing until he learns what will work.