Thomas Edison — "My main purpose in life is to make money so that I can afford to carry on more e…"
My main purpose in life is to make money so that I can afford to carry on more experiments.
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More from Thomas Edison
"Restlessness is discontent and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure."
"There's a way to do it better - find it."
"I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work."
"I am not a believer in the theory of evolution. I believe in the theory of creation. I believe that God created the world and everything in it."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Money is not the goal itself but the fuel for something bigger. The speaker wants wealth only because it funds the work that truly matters to them: running experiments, testing ideas, and building things. Earnings are treated as a means to keep creating, not as a measure of success or a reward to enjoy. Profit exists to be reinvested into more discovery.
Relevance to Thomas Edison
Edison ran Menlo Park and later West Orange as industrial research labs that devoured capital, staffing dozens of assistants and stockpiling exotic materials for the light bulb, phonograph, and film work. He founded Edison Electric and General Electric partly to bankroll research, patented 1,093 inventions, and repeatedly plowed earnings back into the next project rather than living lavishly on royalties.
The era
In late-1800s America, invention was shifting from lone tinkerers to capital-intensive industrial R&D. The Second Industrial Revolution demanded money for equipment, patents, and staff, while Gilded Age financiers like J.P. Morgan funded electrification. Edison worked in an era before government science grants, so inventors self-financed through business ventures, making the link between commerce and experimentation a practical necessity of the age.
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