Thomas Edison

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety nine percent perspiration.

Thomas Alva Edison (11 February 1847 – 18 October 1931) was an American inventor and businessman who developed many devices which greatly influenced life worldwide into the twenty-first century.

Quotes

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

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

I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power!

Discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I'll show you a failure.

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

I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.

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

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

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

1800s

• 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.
  • When Thomas Edison visited the Eiffel Tower during the 1889 World's Fair, he signed the guestbook with this message, as quoted in The Tallest Tower by Joseph Harris, p. 95

• During all those years of experimentation and research, I never once made a discovery. All my work was deductive, and the results I achieved were those of invention, pure and simple. I would construct a theory and work on its lines until I found it was untenable. Then it would be discarded at once and another theory evolved. This was the only possible way for me to work out the problem. … I speak without exaggeration when I say that I have constructed 3,000 different theories in connection with the electric light, each one of them reasonable and apparently likely to be true. Yet only in two cases did my experiments prove the truth of my theory. My chief difficulty was in constructing the carbon filament. . . . Every quarter of the globe was ransacked by my agents, and all sorts of the queerest materials used, until finally the shred of bamboo, now utilized by us, was settled upon.
  • On his years of research in developing the electric light bulb, as quoted in "Talks with Edison" by George Parsons Lathrop in Harper's magazine, Vol. 80 (February 1890), p. 425.
  • Variant:
  • 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.
    • As quoted in Makers of the Modern World : The Lives of Ninety-two Writers, Artists, Scientists, Statesmen, Inventors, Philosophers, Composers, and Other Creators who Formed the Pattern of Our Century (1955) by Louis Untermeyer, p. 227

• 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.
  • Quoted by Theodore Dreiser in A Photographic Talk with Edison, Success magazine (February 1898)

1900s

• The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.
  • This has been reprinted many times with slight variations on the wording; it is part of a much larger quote directly from Edison published in 1903:

Nineteen hundred and three will bring great advances in surgery, in the study of bacteria, in the knowledge of the cause and prevention of disease. Medicine is played out. Every new discovery of bacteria shows us all the more convincingly that we have been wrong and that the million tons of stuff we have taken was all useless.
The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will instruct his patient in the care of the human frame, in diet and in the cause and prevention of disease.
They may even discover the germ of old age. I don't predict it, but it might be by the sacrifice of animal life human life could be prolonged.
Surgery, diet, antiseptics — these three are the vital things of the future in preserving the health of humanity. There were never so many able, active minds at work on the problems of diseases as now, and all their discoveries are tending to the simple truth — that you can't improve on nature.

• As quoted in "Wizard Edison" in The Newark Advocate (2 January 1903), p. 1 according to research by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson at snopes.com

• X-rays ... I am afraid of them. I stopped experimenting with them two years ago, when I came near to losing my eyesight and Dally, my assistant practically lost the use of both of his arms.
  • Quoted in 'Edison Fears Hidden Perils of the X-Rays', New York World (3 Aug 1903), 1

• Hell! There ain't no rules around here! We are tryin' to accomplish somep'n!
  • Response received (after Edison spat on the floor and before he walked off) when M. A. Rosanoff joined the West Orange, New Jersey team in 1903 and humbly asked: “Mr. Edison, please tell me what laboratory rules you want me to observe.” M. A. Rosanoff’s quote appeared in Harper’s Monthly, September 1932, p. 24.

• Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.
  • Edison claimed authorship of this statement in a 1927 letter: "it is quite true I once made the statement that genius is one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration, and I am still of the same opinion".
  • He repeated the claim in a 1932 interview with Harper's Monthly: "You may have heard people repeat what I have said. 'Genius is one per cent inspiration, ninety-nine per cent perspiration'".
  • It is not clear exactly when Edison first made this form of the remark; it was attributed to him with this wording by 1901.
  • Precursors:
    • A poet's inspiration is most frequently an editor's perspiration
      • Unattributed aphorism in an 1881 newspaper article.
    • No inspiration without perspiration
      • Attributed to Kate Sanborn in an 1891 newspaper article.
    • Inspiration is perspiration
      • Cited as an unattributed "proverb" in an 1891 article.
    • Genius is inspiration, talent is perspiration
      • Attributed to Sanborn in an 1893 newspaper article.
    • Genius and adaptability is one per cent. Hard work is 99 per cent
      • Unattributed aphorism in an 1895 newspaper article.
    • [Thomas Edison] says, "Inspiration is perspiration".
      • Attributed to Edison in an 1897 issue of The Musician magazine.
    • Once, when asked to give his definition of genius, Edison replied: "Two per cent. is genius, and 98 per cent. is hard work." At another time, when the argument that genius was inspiration was brought before him, he said: "Bah! Genius is not inspired. Inspiration is perspiration"
      • From an April 1898 article in Ladies' Home Journal containing stories about Edison "as told by his intimate friends".
    • Edison is credited with the extremely funny and acute saying that "genius is ninety percent perspiration"
      • From a May 1898 article.
    • Even Mr. Edison is quoted as having said that genius may be divided into two parts, of which inspiration is 2 per cent and perspiration 98.
      • From a speech by J. K. Orr to an Atlanta high school, as reported in a May 1898 newspaper article.
    • "Genius is three per cent. inspiration and ninety-seven per cent. perspiration"
      • Unattributed saying from an 1899 "help wanted" advertisement.
  • Variants:
    • 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 percent perspiration.
      • Statement in a press conference (1929), as quoted in Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James D. Newton, p. 24.
    • Variant forms without early citation: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration. Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his or her homework."
      "Genius: one percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration."
    • Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.
      • As quoted in Thomas Alva Edison : Sixty Years of an Inventor's Life (1908) by Francis Arthur Jones, p. 14

1910s

• Nature is what we know. We do not know the gods of religions. And nature is not kind, or merciful, or loving. If God made me — the fabled God of the three qualities of which I spoke: mercy, kindness, love — He also made the fish I catch and eat. And where do His mercy, kindness, and love for that fish come in? No; nature made us — nature did it all — not the gods of the religions
  • Thomas Edison ""No Immortality of the Soul" says Thomas A. Edison. In Fact, He Doesn't Believe There Is a Soul — Human Beings Only an Aggregate of Cells and the Brain Only a Wonderful Machine, Says Wizard of Electricity". New York Times. October 2, 1910

• Some day some fellow will invent a way of concentrating and storing up sunshine to use instead of this old, absurd Prometheus scheme of fire. I'll do the trick myself if someone doesn't get at it. . . . Sunshine is spread out thin and so is electricity. Perhaps they are the same, but we will take that up later. . . . This scheme of combustion to get power makes me sick to think of — it is so wasteful. It is just the old, foolish Prometheus idea, and the father of Prometheus was a baboon. When we learn how to store electricity, we will cease being apes ourselves; until then we are tailless orang-outangs. You see, we should utilize natural forces and thus get all of our power. Sunshine is a form of energy, and the winds and the tides are manifestations of energy. Do we use them? Oh, no; we burn up wood and coal, as renters burn up the front fence for fuel. We live like squatters, not as if we owned the property. There must surely come a time when heat and power will be stored in unlimited quantities in every community, all gathered by natural forces. Electricity ought to be as cheap as oxygen, for it can not be destroyed.
  • As quoted in The Fra: A Journal of Affirmation vol. 5 no. 1, April 1910, by Elbert Hubbard, pp. 6-7
  • Variant:
  • We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy — sun, wind and tide. … I'd put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don't have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that.
    • In conversation with Henry Ford and Harvey Firestone (1931); as quoted in Uncommon Friends : Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh (1987) by James Newton, p. 31

1920s

• If our nation can issue a dollar bond, it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good, makes the bill good, also. The difference between the bond and the bill is the bond lets money brokers collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%, whereas the currency pays nobody but those who contribute directly in some useful way. … It is absurd to say our country can issue $30 million in bonds and not $30 million in currency. Both are promises to pay, but one promise fattens the usurers and the other helps the people.

Full quote:

“People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project nor contribute a pound of material, will collect more money from the United States than will the People who supply all the material and do all the work. This is the terrible thing about interest ...But here is the point: If the Nation can issue a dollar bond it can issue a dollar bill. The element that makes the bond good makes the bill good also. The difference between the bond and the bill is that the bond lets the money broker collect twice the amount of the bond and an additional 20%. Whereas the currency, the honest sort provided by the Constitution pays nobody but those who contribute in some useful way. It is absurd to say our Country can issue bonds and cannot issue currency. Both are promises to pay, but one fattens the usurer and the other helps the People. If the currency issued by the People were no good, then the bonds would be no good, either. 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.” ― Thomas A. Edison

• • Commenting on Henry Ford's currency plan in ”Ford sees wealth in Muscle Shoals”, New York Times (6 December 1921), p. 6

• 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. What a soul may be is beyond my understanding.
  • "Do We Live Again?" an interview with Edison, as quoted in Mr. Edison's New Argument from Design" in The Illustrated London News (3 May 1924)

1930s

• I believe in the existence of a Supreme Intelligence pervading the Universe.
  • As quoted in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World's Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ch. 25 : Edison's Views on Life — His Philosophy and Religion, p. 293

• We really haven't got any great amount of data on the subject, and without data how can we reach any definite conclusions? All we have — everything — favors the idea of what religionists call the "Hereafter." Science, if it ever learns the facts, probably will find another more definitely descriptive term.
  • As quoted in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World's Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ch. 25 : Edison's Views on Life — His Philosophy and Religion, p. 295

• It is very beautiful over there!
  • These have sometimes been reported as his last words, but were actually spoken several days before his death, as he awoke from a nap, gazing upwards, as reported by his physician Dr. Hubert S. Howe, in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World's Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller, Ch. 25 : Edison's Views on Life — His Philosophy and Religion, p. 295

• We don't know a millionth of one percent about anything.
  • As quoted in Golden Book (April 1931), according to Stevenson's Book of Quotations (Cassell 3rd edition 1938) by Burton Egbert Stevenson.

• There is a great directing head of people and things — a Supreme Being who looks after the destinies of the world.
  I am convinced that the body is made up of entities that are intelligent and are directed by this Higher Power. When one cuts his finger, I believe it is the intelligence of these entities which heals the wound. When one is sick, it is the intelligence of these entities which brings convalescence. You know that there are living cells in the body so tiny that the microscope cannot find them at all. The entities that give life and soul to the human body are finer still and lie infinitely beyond the reach of our finest scientific instruments. When these entities leave the body, the body is like a ship without a rudder — deserted, motionless and dead.
  • As quoted in The Romance and Drama of the Rubber Industry (1936) by Harvey Samuel Firestone

Date unknown

• Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.
  • The Diary and Sundry Observations of Thomas Alva Edison (1948), p. 110

• So far as the religion of the day is concerned, it is a damned fake … Religion is all bunk.
  • As quoted in What on Earth is an Atheist! (1972) by Madalyn Murray O'Hair, p. 251

• Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.
  • As quoted in An Enemy Called Average (1990) by John L. Mason, p. 55

• If we did all the things we are capable of doing, we would literally astound ourselves.
  • As quoted in Motivating Humans : Goals, Emotions, and Personal Agency Beliefs (1992) by Martin E. Ford, p. 17

• To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.
  • As quoted in Behavior-Based Robotics (1998) by Ronald C. Arkin. p. 8

• 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!
  • As quoted in Tesla : The Modern Sorcerer (1999) by Daniel Blair Stewart, p. 411
  • Variant: Everyone steals in commerce and industry. I have stolen a lot myself. But at least I know how to steal.

• I find out what the world needs. Then, I go ahead and invent it.
  • As quoted in American Greats (1999) Edited by Robert A. Wilson and Stanley Marcus, p. 70

• Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.
  • As quoted in Artifacts : An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (2001) by Christine Finn. p. 90

• I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.
  • As quoted in Edison & Ford Quote Book (2003) edited by Edison & Ford Winter Estates

• Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.
  • As quoted in Edison & Ford Quote Book (2003) edited by Edison & Ford Winter Estates

• I have never seen the slightest scientific proof of the religious ideas of heaven and hell, of future life for individuals, or of a personal God.
  • As quoted in Jesus : Myth Or Reality? (2006) by Ian Curtis, p. 289

• I do not believe in the God of the theologians; but that there is a Supreme Intelligence I do not doubt
  • The Freethinker (1970), G.W. Foote & Company, Volume 90, p. 147

• 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.
  • Diary entry, as quoted in Defending and Parenting Children Who Learn Differently : Lessons from Edison's Mother (2007) by Scott Teel, p. 12

The Philosophy of Paine (1925)

Essay in The Diary and Sundry Observations (1948) edited by Dagobert D. Runes - Full essay online

I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles.

• Tom Paine has almost no influence on present-day thinking in the United States because he is unknown to the average citizen. Perhaps I might say right here that this is a national loss and a deplorable lack of understanding concerning the man who first proposed and first wrote those impressive words, 'the United States of America.' But it is hardly strange. Paine's teachings have been debarred from schools everywhere and his views of life misrepresented until his memory is hidden in shadows, or he is looked upon as of unsound mind.
  We never had a sounder intelligence in this Republic. He was the equal of Washington in making American liberty possible. Where Washington performed Paine devised and wrote. The deeds of one in the Weld were matched by the deeds of the other with his pen.

In Common Sense Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.

• I consider Paine our greatest political thinker. As we have not advanced, and perhaps never shall advance, beyond the Declaration and Constitution, so Paine has had no successors who extended his principles. Although the present generation knows little of Paine's writings,and although he has almost no influence upon contemporary thought, Americans of the future will justly appraise his work. I am certain of it.
  Truth is governed by natural laws and cannot be denied. Paine spoke truth with a peculiarly clear and forceful ring. Therefore time must balance the scales.

• Looking back to those times we cannot, without much reading, clearly gauge the sentiment of the Colonies. Perhaps the larger number of responsible men still hoped for peace with England. They did not even venture to express the matter that way. Few men, indeed, had thought in terms of war.
  Then Paine wrote 'Common Sense,' an anonymous tract which immediately stirred the fires of liberty. It flashed from hand to hand throughout the Colonies. One copy reached the New York Assembly, in session at Albany, and a night meeting was voted to answer this unknown writer with his clarion call to liberty. The Assembly met, but could find no suitable answer. Tom Paine had inscribed a document which never has been answered adversely, and never can be, so long as man esteems his priceless possession.
  In 'Common Sense' Paine flared forth with a document so powerful that the Revolution became inevitable. Washington recognized the difference, and in his calm way said that matters never could be the same again.. It must be remembered that 'Common Sense' preceded the declaration and affirmed the very principles that went into the national doctrine of liberty. But that affirmation was made with more vigor, more of the fire of the patriot and was exactly suited to the hour. It is probable that we should have had the Revolution without Tom Paine. Certainly it could not be forestalled, once he had spoken.

• Many a person who could not comprehend Rousseau, and would be puzzled by Montesquieu, could understand Paine as an open book. He wrote with a clarity, a sharpness of outline and exactness of speech that even a schoolboy should be able to grasp. There is nothing false, little that is subtle, and an impressive lack of the negative in Paine. He literally cried to his reader for a comprehending hour, and then filled that hour with such sagacious reasoning as we find surpassed nowhere else in American letters — seldom in any school of writing.

• He has been called an atheist, but atheist he was not. Paine believed in a supreme intelligence, as representing the idea which other men often express by the name of deity.
  His Bible was the open face of nature, the broad skies, the green hills. He disbelieved the ancient myths and miracles taught by established creeds. But the attacks on those creeds — or on persons devoted to them — have served to darken his memory, casting a shadow across the closing years of his life.
  When Theodore Roosevelt termed Tom Paine a "dirty little atheist" he surely spoke from lack of understanding. It was a stricture, an inaccurate charge of the sort that has dimmed the greatness of this eminent American. But the true measure of his stature will yet be appreciated. The torch which he handed on will not be extinguished.

• The memory of Tom Paine will outlive all this. No man who helped to lay the foundations of our liberty — who stepped forth as the champion of so difficult a cause — can be permanently obscured by such attacks. Tom Paine should be read by his countrymen. I commend his fame to their hands.

Disputed

• 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.
  • As quoted inThe A-V Magazine Vol. 89, No. 1 (January 1981), p. 18, and The Extended Circle : A Dictionary of Humane Thought (1985) by Jon Wynne-Tyson, p. 75; this has been cited to "Harper's Magazine (1890)" but no occurrence prior to the 1981 appearance has been located.

• I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.
  • As quoted in: [J. L.] Elkhorne. Edison — The Fabulous Drone, in 73 Vol. XLVI, No. 3 (March 1967), p. 52

• When you've exhausted all possibilities, remember this: You Haven't!
  • Not located in Edison's writings, but found in Robert H. Schuller's self-help book Tough Times Never Last, But Tough People Do! from 1983.

Misattributed

• There is time for everything.
  • This expression greatly predates any use of it by Edison. George Head used it in A Home Tour Through the Manufacturing Districts of England in the Summer of 1835 (1836), p. 198, in which he states: If time be judiciously employed, there is time for everything.
  • There is also an entry in the Bible (Ecclesiastes 3:1) that says There is [a] time for everything, however this varies a lot between the different translations.

• I am much less interested in what is called God's word than in God's deeds. All bibles are man-made.
  • John Burroughs, in "Religious Contrasts : Letters of Pantheist and a Churchman", in The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 128, No. 4 (October 1921), p. 520

• There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking.
  • Sir Joshua Reynolds. Edison liked the quote and posted it around his factory.

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ~ Nikola Tesla

Quotes about Edison

• To my simple mind it is not obvious that a successful electrician is an authority on the immortal soul, any more than that a successful military strategist has an ear for music, or an admirable French cook a grasp of the higher mathematics.
  • G. K. Chesterton, on the interview with Edison "Do We Live Again?" in which he stated "My mind is incapable of conceiving such a thing as a soul."

• He felt there was a central processing core of life that went on and on. That was his conclusion. We talked of it many times together . . . Call it religion or what you like, Mr. Edison believed that the universe was alive and that it was responsive to man's deep necessity. It was an intelligent and hopeful religion if there ever was one. Mr. Edison went away expecting light, not darkness.
  • Henry Ford, as quoted in Thomas A. Edison, Benefactor of Mankind : The Romantic Life Story of the World's Greatest Inventor (1931) by Francis Trevelyan Miller, p. 294

• It impressed me that Thomas Edison and the Wright brothers were so single-minded in figuring out how to make a light bulb or an airplane. They spent lots of time obsessively perfecting their inventions.
  • Temple Grandin "Society Is Failing Visual Thinkers, and That Hurts Us All", New York Times (January 9, 2023)

• If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.
  • Nikola Tesla, as quoted in The New York Times (19 October 1931)

• He never was an atheist. Although he subscribed to no orthodox creed, no one who knew him could have doubted his belief in and reverence for a Supreme Intelligence, and his whole life, in which the ideal of honest, loving service to his fellowman was predominant, indicated faithfully those two commandments wherein lies "all the law and all the prophets."
  • Arthur L. Walsh, vice-president of Thomas A. Edison Industries, Inc. Palo, as reported in "The Light Goes Out" in The Washington Post (18 October 1931)

External links

Biography

Albion, Michele Werhwein, The Quotable Edison, University Press of Florida, 2011

• Dyer, Frank Lewis, "Edison, His Life And Inventions". (Worldwideschool.org)
• Beals, Gerry, "Thomas Edison"
• Murphy, John Patrick Michael, "Thomas Alva Edison"
• Hommage a Thomas Edison, "[1]"

Writings and speech

• Edison, Thomas A., "The Philosophy of Thomas Paine" (7 June 1925)

Archives

• Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University
• Thomas Edison's Patents - Rutgers University
• Edisonian Museum Antique Electrics
• Thomas A. Edison in his laboratory in New Jersey, 1901
• "Edison's Miracle of Light". American Experience, PBS

Historic sites

• Edison Birthplace Museum (Milan, Ohio)
• Thomas Edison House (Louisville, Kentucky)
• Menlo Park Museum (Edison, NJ)
• Edison National Historic Site (West Orange, NJ)

Relations

• One Story of Nikola Tesla : Anecdotes concerning the relationship of Tesla and Edison