Thomas A. Edison Men Quotations

What a man's mind can create, man's character can control.

I start where the last man left off.

There seems to be no limit to which some men will go to avoid the labor of thinking. Thinking is hard work.

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.

I start where the last man left off. What the mind of man can conceive and believe, the mind of a man can achieve.

Results? Why, man, I have gotten lots of results! If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is often a step forward....

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.

I am more of a sponge than an inventor. I absorb ideas from every source. I take half-matured schemes for mechanical development and make them practical. I am a sort of a middleman between the long-haired and impractical inventor and the hard-headed business man who measures all things in terms of dollars and cents. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant but misdirected ideas of others.

Whatever the mind of man creates, should be controlled by man's character.

Fools call wise men fools. A wise man never calls any man a fool.

The man who doesn’t make up his mind to cultivate the habit of thinking misses the greatest pleasure in life.

A man’s best friend is a good wife.

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.

Nature is truly wonderful. Only man is truly foul.

It is a terrible situation when the Government, to insure the National Wealth, must go in debt and submit to ruinous interest charges, at the hands of men, who control the fictitious value of gold. Interest is the invention of Satan.

Fooling around with alternating currents is just a waste of time. Nobody will use it, ever. It's too dangerous . . . it could kill a man as quick as a bolt of lightning. Direct current is safe.

All bibles are man-made.

I would rather have one man with enthusiasm working with me than ten who are complacent.

Until man duplicates a blade of grass, nature can laugh at his so called scientific knowledge.

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

It is absurd to say that our country can issue $30,000,000 in bonds and not $30,000,000 in currency. Both are promises to pay; but one promise fattens the usurer (banker), and the other helps the people. If the currency issued by the Government were no good, then the bonds issued would be no good either. It is a terrible situation when the Government, to increase the national wealth, must go into debt and submit to ruinous interest charges at the hands of men who control the fictitious values of gold.

My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul. I may be in error, and man may have a soul; but I simply do not believe it.

A reporter called on Edison to interview him about a substitute for lead in the manufacture of storage batteries that the scientist was seeking. Edison informed the man that he had made 20,000 experiments but none had worked. "Aren't you discouraged by all this waste of effort?" the reporter asked. Edison: "Waste! There's nothing wasted. I have discovered 20,000 things that won't work."

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.

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.

I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds. All bibles are man-made.

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

There is no limit to which a man will not go to avoid thinking.

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

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.

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