Top 200 Thomas A. Edison Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.”

— Thomas A. Edison

152. “We haven’t failed. We now know a thousand things that won’t work, so we are much closer to finding what will.”

— Thomas A. Edison

153. “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.”

— Thomas A. Edison

154. “Nothing that’s good works by itself, you’ve got to make the damn thing work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

155. “People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward.”

— Thomas A. Edison

156. “I am 67, but I’m not too old to make a fresh start.”

— Thomas A. Edison

157. “We have merely scratched the surface of the store of knowledge which will come to us. I believe that we are now, a-tremble on the verge of vast discoveries – discoveries so wondrously important they will upset the present trend of human thought and start it along completely new lines .”

— Thomas A. Edison

158. “The biggest failure of man is that he gives up before he realizes how close he was to success.”

— Thomas A. Edison

159. “There cannot be overproduction of anything which men and women want. And their wants are unlimited, except by the size of their stomachs.”

— Thomas A. Edison

160. “The very first thing an executive must have is a fine memory. Of course it does not follow that a man with a fine memory is necessarily a fine executive. But if he has the memory he has the first qualification, and if he has not the memory nothing else matters.”

— Thomas A. Edison

161. “The inventor tries to meet the demand of a crazy civilization.”

— Thomas A. Edison

162. “Through all the years of experimenting and research, I never once made a discovery. I start where the last man left off. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention pure and simple.”

— Thomas A. Edison

163. “Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won’t work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

164. “Because I readily absorb ideas from every source – frequently starting where the last person left off – I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might improve it.”

— Thomas A. Edison

165. “You can’t realize your dreams unless you have one to begin with.”

— Thomas A. Edison

166. “When there’s no experimenting there’s no progress. Stop experimenting and you go backward. If anything goes wrong, experiment until you get to the very bottom of the trouble.”

— Thomas A. Edison

167. “Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.”

— Thomas A. Edison

168. “The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.”

— Thomas A. Edison

169. “For faith, as well intentioned as it may be, must be built on facts, not fiction – faith in fiction is a damnable false hope.”

— Thomas A. Edison

170. “I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”

— Thomas A. Edison

171. “It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.”

— Thomas A. Edison

172. “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!”

— Thomas A. Edison

173. “I get my ideas from listening from within.”

— Thomas A. Edison

174. “To Monsieur Eiffel the Engineer, the brave builder of so gigantic and original a specimen of modern Engineering from one who has the greatest respect and admiration for all Engineers including the Great Engineer the Bon Dieu.”

— Thomas A. Edison

175. “I have had a lot of success with failure.”

— Thomas A. Edison

176. “The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.”

— Thomas A. Edison

177. “His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.”

— Thomas A. Edison

178. “Somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble, I should judge, to lie with the schools.”

— Thomas A. Edison

179. “Absorb ideas from every source.”

— Thomas A. Edison

180. “A failure teaches you that something can’t be done-that way.”

— Thomas A. Edison

181. “I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.”

— Thomas A. Edison

182. “I try not to invent things that people don’t need.”

— Thomas A. Edison

183. “Be courageous. I have seen many depressions in business. Always America has emerged from these stronger and more prosperous. Be brave as your fathers before you. Have faith! Go forward!”

— Thomas A. Edison

184. “Let the public throw bouquets to the inventors and in time we will all be happy.”

— Thomas A. Edison

185. “I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious theories of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.”

— Thomas A. Edison

186. “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.”

— Thomas A. Edison

187. “Waste is worse than loss. The time is coming when every person who lays claim to ability will keep the question of waste before him constantly. The scope of thrift is limitless.”

— Thomas A. Edison

188. “What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.”

— Thomas A. Edison

189. “I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.”

— Thomas A. Edison

190. “Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.”

— Thomas A. Edison

191. “I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.”

— Thomas A. Edison

192. “Education isn’t play – and it can’t be made to look like play. It is hard, hard work. But it can be made interesting work.”

— Thomas A. Edison

193. “Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best.”

— Thomas A. Edison

194. “We are striking it big in the electric light, better than my vivid imagination first conceived. Where this thing is going to stop Lord only knows.”

— Thomas A. Edison

195. “Interest is the invention of Satan.”

— Thomas A. Edison

196. “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.”

— Thomas A. Edison

197. “I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.”

— Thomas A. Edison

198. “There will one day spring from the brain of science a machine or force so fearful in its potentialities, so absolutely terrifying, that even man, the fighter, who will dare torture and death in order to inflict torture and death, will be appalled, and so abandon war forever.”

— Thomas A. Edison

199. “I know this world is ruled by infinite intelligence. Everything that surrounds us- everything that exists – proves that there are infinite laws behind it. There can be no denying this fact. It is mathematical in its precision.”

— Thomas A. Edison

200. “Religion is all bunk.”

— Thomas A. Edison