Thomas Edison

Opportunity is missed by most people because it comes dressed in overalls and looks like work.

There is time for everything.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.

To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.

Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration.

If we all did the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.

Great ideas originate in the muscles.

Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.

I have friends in overalls whose friendship I would not swap for the favor of the kings of the world.

It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.

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.

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.

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

Religion is all bunk.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.

The value of an idea lies in the using of it.

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.

There's a way to do it better - find it.

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

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

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

Many of life's failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.