Top 200 Thomas A. Edison Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 4 of 5

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

— Thomas A. Edison

152. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

154. “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

155. “Do the thing and the power will come.”

— Thomas A. Edison

156. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

158. “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

159. “I believe that the motion picture is destined to revolutionize our educational system and that in a few years it will supplant largely, if not entirely, the use of textbooks.”

— Thomas A. Edison

160. “I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.”

— Thomas A. Edison

161. “None of my inventions came by accident. I see a worthwhile need to be met and I make trial after trial until it comes. What it boils down to is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.”

— Thomas A. Edison

162. “I did not fail two thousand times. I merely found two thousand ways not to make a lightbulb.”

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

— Thomas A. Edison

165. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

170. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

172. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

175. “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

176. “The greatest discoveries will be along spiritual lines. This is the field where miracles are going to happen. Spiritual power is the greatest underdeveloped power and has the greatest future.”

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

178. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

180. “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

181. “Absorb ideas from every source.”

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

185. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

187. “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

188. “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

189. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

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

— Thomas A. Edison

194. “Interest is the invention of Satan.”

— Thomas A. Edison

195. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

197. “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

198. “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

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

— Thomas A. Edison

200. “Religion is all bunk.”

— Thomas A. Edison