Thomas Edison (1847–1931) was an American inventor and entrepreneur known for his prolific innovations. He held over a thousand patents, including the electric light bulb and the phonograph. Edison’s most notable invention, the practical electric light bulb, revolutionized indoor lighting and paved the way for modern electrical systems. He also established the world’s first industrial research laboratory, where he and his team developed numerous technological advancements. Edison’s entrepreneurial spirit led to the creation of the first commercially viable electrical power distribution system, transforming industries and improving people’s lives. His contributions to telecommunications, motion pictures, and other fields further cemented his legacy as one of the most influential inventors in history. Edison’s work continues to inspire generations of innovators and remains integral to the development of modern technology.
Thomas Edison Quotes
1. “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
2. “Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”
— Thomas A. Edison
3. “There’s a way to do it better – find it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
4. “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”
— Thomas A. Edison
5. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.”
— Thomas A. Edison
6. “There is no substitute for hard work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
7. “When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven’t.”
— Thomas A. Edison
8. “We often miss opportunity because it’s dressed in overalls and looks like work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
9. “There are no rules here – we’re trying to accomplish something.”
— Thomas A. Edison
10. “Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.”
— Thomas A. Edison
11. “I never did a day’s work in my life, it was all fun.”
— Thomas A. Edison
12. “Tomorrow is my exam but I don’t care because a single sheet of paper can’t decide my future.”
— Thomas A. Edison
13. “If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.”
— Thomas A. Edison
14. “Negative results are just what I want. They’re just as valuable to me as positive results. I can never find the thing that does the job best until I find the ones that don’t.”
— Thomas A. Edison
15. “The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
— Thomas A. Edison
16. “Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.”
— Thomas A. Edison
17. “The value of an idea lies in the using of it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
18. “Vision without execution is delusion.”
— Thomas A. Edison
19. “I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
20. “I never quit until I get what I want.”
— Thomas A. Edison
21. “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
— Thomas A. Edison
22. “Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”
— Thomas A. Edison
23. “The doctor of the future will no longer treat the human frame with drugs, but rather will cure and prevent disease with nutrition.”
— Thomas A. Edison
24. “I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.”
— Thomas A. Edison
25. “I didn’t fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.”
— Thomas A. Edison
26. “Our greatest weakness lies in giving up.”
— Thomas A. Edison
27. “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose.”
— Thomas A. Edison
28. “I failed my way to success.”
— Thomas A. Edison
29. “The successful person makes a habit of doing what the failing person doesn’t like to do.”
— Thomas A. Edison
30. “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will involve the patient in the proper use of food, fresh air and exercise.”
— Thomas A. Edison
31. “Each time you fail, you have eliminated another wrong option.”
— Thomas A. Edison
32. “Good fortune is what happens when opportunity meets with planning.”
— Thomas A. Edison
33. “Every failure is a lesson learned about your strategy.”
— Thomas A. Edison
34. “Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. As a result, a genius is often a talented person who has simply done all of his homework.”
— Thomas A. Edison
35. “A man’s best friend is a good wife.”
— Thomas A. Edison
36. “Never Say I Failed 99 Times, Say I Discovered 99 Ways Which Causes Failure!”
— Thomas A. Edison
37. “Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.”
— Thomas A. Edison
38. “I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.”
— Thomas A. Edison
39. “Genius is 99% perspiration and 1% inspiration.”
— Thomas A. Edison
40. “Success depends on how many experiments you can fit into 24 hours.”
— Thomas A. Edison
41. “Seeming to do is not doing.”
— Thomas A. Edison
42. “An idea is something that won’t work unless you do.”
— Thomas A. Edison
43. “This problem, once solved, will be simple.”
— Thomas A. Edison
44. “To get a great idea, come up with lots of them.”
— Thomas A. Edison
45. “Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.”
— Thomas A. Edison
46. “The first requisite of success is the ability to apply your physical and mental energies to one problem without growing weary.”
— Thomas A. Edison
47. “The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.”
— Thomas A. Edison
48. “My success is due more to my ability to work continuously on one thing without stopping than to any other single quality.”
— Thomas A. Edison
49. “To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.”
— Thomas A. Edison
50. “Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.”
— Thomas A. Edison
51. “There is a better way for everything. Find it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
52. “There is far more opportunity than there is ability.”
— Thomas A. Edison
53. “We will make electricity so cheap that only the rich will burn candles.”
— Thomas A. Edison
54. “First be sure a thing is wanted or needed, then go ahead.”
— Thomas A. Edison
55. “There is great value in disaster. All our mistakes are burned up. Thank God we can start a new.”
— Thomas A. Edison
56. “Focus on how the end-user customers perceive the impact of your innovation – rather than on how you, the innovators, perceive it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
57. “Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.”
— Thomas A. Edison
58. “Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.”
— Thomas A. Edison
59. “The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
60. “I will not say I failed 1000 times, I will say that I discovered there are 1000 ways that can cause failure.”
— Thomas A. Edison
61. “I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.”
— Thomas A. Edison
62. “Never be discouraged, because every wrong turn attempt, when left behind you, is another step forward taking you closer to your goals.”
— Thomas A. Edison
63. “I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.”
— Thomas A. Edison
64. “Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you’re working on.”
— Thomas A. Edison
65. “Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don’t work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they’ll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they’ll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they’ve got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.”
— Thomas A. Edison
66. “I have not failed 700 times. I have not failed once. I have succeeded in proving that those 700 ways will not work. When I have eliminated the ways that will not work, I will find the way that will work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
67. “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.”
— Thomas A. Edison
68. “I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.”
— Thomas A. Edison
69. “The only time I really become discouraged is when I think of all the things I would like to do and the little time I have in which to do them.”
— Thomas A. Edison
70. “Continued innovation is the best way to beat the competition.”
— Thomas A. Edison
71. “When you become quiet, it just dawns on you.”
— Thomas A. Edison
72. “Consider data without prejudice.”
— Thomas A. Edison
73. “Accomplishing something provides the only real satisfaction in life.”
— Thomas A. Edison
74. “Large portions of life’s disappointments are individuals who did not understand that they were so near achievement when they surrendered.”
— Thomas A. Edison
75. “The stomach is the only part of man which can be fully satisfied. The yearning of man’s brain for new knowledge and experience and for more pleasant and comfortable surroundings never can be completely met. It is an appetite which cannot be appeased.”
— Thomas A. Edison
76. “The thing I lose patience with the most is the clock. Its hands move too fast.”
— Thomas A. Edison
77. “No, I haven’t failed thousands of times. On the contrary, I have successfully eliminated thousands of ideas that do not work!”
— Thomas A. Edison
78. “Of the 200 light bulbs that didn’t work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.”
— Thomas A. Edison
79. “Anything that won’t sell, I don’t want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.”
— Thomas A. Edison
80. “The perils of overwork are slight compared with the dangers of inactivity.”
— Thomas A. Edison
81. “Great ideas originate in the muscles.”
— Thomas A. Edison
82. “When down in the mouth, remember Jonah. He came out all right.”
— Thomas A. Edison
83. “Every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.”
— Thomas A. Edison
84. “If I could solve all the problems myself, I would.”
— Thomas A. Edison
85. “I am a vegetarian as well as a passionate anti-alcoholic, because I can thus make better use of my brain.”
— Thomas A. Edison
86. “Success is the result of hard work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
87. “The body is a community made up of its innumerable cells or inhabitants.”
— Thomas A. Edison
88. “The radio craze will die out in time.”
— Thomas A. Edison
89. “Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so-called scientific knowledge. Remedies from chemicals will never stand in favor compared with the products of nature, the living cell of the plant, the final result of the rays of the sun, the mother of all life.”
— Thomas A. Edison
90. “A lawsuit is the suicide of time.”
— Thomas A. Edison
91. “I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt.”
— Thomas A. Edison
92. “Life’s most soothing things are a child’s goodnight and sweet music.”
— Thomas A. Edison
93. “I believe that the science of chemistry alone almost proves the existence of an intelligent creator.”
— Thomas A. Edison
94. “My mother was the making of me.”
— Thomas A. Edison
95. “I was always afraid of things that worked the first time. Long experience proved that there were great drawbacks found generally before they could be got commercial; but here was something there was no doubt of.”
— Thomas A. Edison
96. “I do not believe any type of religion should ever be introduced into the public schools of the United States.”
— Thomas A. Edison
97. “Not only will atomic power be released, but someday we will harness the rise and fall of the tides and imprison the rays of the sun.”
— Thomas A. Edison
98. “To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity.”
— Thomas A. Edison
99. “There is far more danger in public than in private monopoly, for when Government goes into business it can always shift its losses to the taxpayers. Government never makes ends meetand that is the first requisite of business.”
— Thomas A. Edison
100. “I am so deaf I am debarred from hearing all the time articulation and have to depend on the judgment of others.”
— Thomas A. Edison
101. “What you are will show in what you do.”
— Thomas A. Edison
102. “I have determined that there is no market for talking pictures.”
— Thomas A. Edison
103. “Sleep is like a drug. Take too much at a time and it makes you dopey. You lose time and opportunities.”
— Thomas A. Edison
104. “I think that Ingersoll had all the attributes of a perfect man, and, in my opinion, no finer personality ever existed. Judging from the past, I cannot help thinking that the intention of the Supreme Intelligence that rules the world is to ultimately make such a type of man universal.”
— Thomas A. Edison
105. “A genius is a talented person who does his homework.”
— Thomas A. Edison
106. “The money one gets for selling one’s soul is always spent in deadening one’s conscience, so the net gain at the end of a lifetime is no greater than if the diabolic bargain had not been struck.”
— Thomas A. Edison
107. “Radio is just a fashion contrivance that will soon die out. It is obvious that there never will be invented a proper receiver!”
— Thomas A. Edison
108. “I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait til oil and coal run out before we tackle that.”
— Thomas A. Edison
109. “The First 40 hours of work per week are for survival. Everything after that is for success.”
— Thomas A. Edison
110. “The greatest invention in the world is the mind of a child.”
— Thomas A. Edison
111. “I have better use for my brain than to poison it with alcohol. To put alcohol in the human brain is like putting sand in the bearings of an engine.”
— Thomas A. Edison
112. “Discontent is the first necessity of progress.”
— Thomas A. Edison
113. “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
114. “The inventor can’t do it all, you’ve got to change people. We have an enormous capacity to invent super-machinery. But our desire to install the device is weak. Human inertia is the problem, not invention. Something in man makes him resist change.”
— Thomas A. Edison
115. “Work while others are wishing.”
— Thomas A. Edison
116. “A good intention, with a bad approach, often leads to a poor result.”
— Thomas A. Edison
117. “Being busy does not always mean real work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
118. “Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.”
— Thomas A. Edison
119. “The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.”
— Thomas A. Edison
120. “Success is based on imagination plus ambition and the will to work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
121. “Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.”
— Thomas A. Edison
122. “My mother was the making of me. She was so true and so sure of me, I felt that I had someone to live for – someone I must not disappoint. The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.”
— Thomas A. Edison
123. “As a cure for worrying, work is far better than whiskey. I always found that, if I began to worry, the best thing I could do was focus upon doing something useful and then work very hard at it. Soon, I would forget what was troubling me.”
— Thomas A. Edison
124. “A diamond is a piece of coal that stuck to the job.”
— Thomas A. Edison
125. “I never view mistakes as failures. They are simply opportunities to find out what doesn’t work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
126. “The endeavor to change universal power by selfish supplication I do not believe in.”
— Thomas A. Ediso
127. “The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
128. “The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus…”
— Thomas A. Edison
129. “We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.”
— Thomas A. Edison
130. “There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking. Thinking is hard work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
131. “The real measure of success is the number of experiments that can be crowded into 24 hours.”
— Thomas A. Edison
132. “The chief function of the body is to carry the brain around.”
— Thomas A. Edison
133. “I’ve realized that most of my best ideas have followed a good night’s sleep.”
— Thomas A. Edison
134. “Sticking to it is the genius.”
— Thomas A. Edison
135. “I start where the last man left off.”
— Thomas A. Edison
136. “I owe my success to the fact that I never had a clock in my workroom.”
— Thomas A. Edison
137. “Failure is the most effective technique to optimize strategic planning, implementation and processes.”
— Thomas A. Edison
138. “Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.”
— Thomas A. Edison
139. “What is a college? An institute of learning. What is a business? An institute of learning. Life, itself, is an institute of learning.”
— Thomas A. Edison
140. “I think work is the world’s greatest fun.”
— Thomas A. Edison
141. “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.”
— Thomas A. Edison
142. “Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I’ve stolen a lot, myself. But I know how to steal! They don’t know how to steal!”
— Thomas A. Edison
143. “From his neck down a man is worth a couple of dollars a day, from his neck up he is worth anything that his brain can produce.”
— Thomas A. Edison
144. “I’ve never made a mistake. I’ve only learned from experience.”
— Thomas A. Edison
145. “The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.”
— Thomas A. Edison
146. “We don’t know a millionth of one percent about anything.”
— Thomas A. Edison
147. “Do the thing and the power will come.”
— Thomas A. Edison
148. “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
149. “I never failed once. It just happened to be a 2000-step process.”
— Thomas A. Edison
150. “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
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. “Nothing that’s good works by itself, you’ve got to make the damn thing work.”
— Thomas A. Edison
154. “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
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. “I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”
— Thomas A. Edison
169. “The memory of my mother will always be a blessing to me.”
— Thomas A. Edison
170. “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
171. “I get my ideas from listening from within.”
— 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. “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
174. “The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.”
— Thomas A. Edison
175. “I have had a lot of success with failure.”
— Thomas A. Edison
176. “His genius he was quite content in one brief sentence to define; Of inspiration one percent, of perspiration, ninety nine.”
— Thomas A. Edison
177. “Absorb ideas from every source.”
— 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. “A failure teaches you that something can’t be done-that way.”
— Thomas A. Edison
180. “I can never pick up a thing without wishing to improve it.”
— Thomas A. Edison
181. “I try not to invent things that people don’t need.”
— Thomas A. Edison
182. “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
183. “Let the public throw bouquets to the inventors and in time we will all be happy.”
— Thomas A. Edison
184. “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
185. “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
186. “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
187. “What a man’s mind can create, man’s character can control.”
— Thomas A. Edison
188. “I am long on ideas, but short on time. I expect to live to be only about a hundred.”
— Thomas A. Edison
189. “Direct thought is not an attribute of feminity. In this, women are now centuries behind man.”
— Thomas A. Edison
190. “I remember that I was never able to get along at school. I was at the foot of the class.”
— Thomas A. Edison
191. “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
192. “Of all my inventions, I liked the phonograph best.”
— Thomas A. Edison
193. “Interest is the invention of Satan.”
— 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. “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
196. “I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill.”
— 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. “Religion is all bunk.”
— 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. “In creating technology for ourselves we created it for the world.”
— Thomas A. Edison
