Thomas Alva Edison Quotes

Restlessness is discontent — and discontent is the first necessity of progress. Show me a thoroughly satisfied man — and I will show you a failure.

All bibles are man-made.

I will not say that I failed a 1000 times but that I found 1000 ways to fail.

Paine suffered then, as now he suffers not so much because of what he wrote as from the misinterpretations of others... 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. If Paine had ceased his writings with 'The Rights of Man' he would have been hailed today as one of the two or three outstanding figures of the Revolution. But 'The Age of Reason' cost him glory at the hands of his countrymen - a greater loss to them than to Tom Paine. I was always interested in Paine the inventor. He conceived and designed the iron bridge and the hollow candle; the principle of the modern central draught burner. The man had a sort of universal genius. He was interested in a diversity of things; but his special creed, his first thought, was liberty. Traducers have said that he spent his last days drinking in pothouses. They have pictured him as a wicked old man coming to a sorry end. But I am persuaded that Paine must have looked with magnanimity and sorrow on the attacks of his countrymen. That those attacks have continued down to our day, with scarcely any abatement, is an indication of how strong prejudice, when once aroused, may become. It has been a custom in some quarters to hold up Paine as an example of everything bad. 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. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

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. Washington himself appreciated Paine at his true worth. Franklin knew him for a great patriot and clear thinker. He was a friend and confidant of Jefferson, and the two must often have debated the academic and practical phases of liberty. 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. The Declaration and the Constitution expressed in form Paine's theory of political rights. He worked in Philadelphia at the time that the first document was written, and occupied a position of intimate contact with the nation's leaders when they framed the Constitution. Certainly we may believe that Washington had a considerable voice in the Constitution. We know that Jefferson had much to do with the document. Franklin also had a hand and probably was responsible in even larger measure for the Declaration. But all of these men had communed with Paine. Their views were intimately understood and closely correlated. There is no doubt whatever that the two great documents of American liberty reflect the philosophy of Paine. ...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... Certainly [the Revolution] could not be forestalled, once he had spoken. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

I have always been interested in this man. My father had a set of Tom Paine's books on the shelf at home. I must have opened the covers about the time I was 13. And I can still remember the flash of enlightenment which shone from his pages. It was a revelation, indeed, to encounter his views on political and religious matters, so different from the views of many people around us. Of course I did not understand him very well, but his sincerity and ardor made an impression upon me that nothing has ever served to lessen. I have heard it said that Paine borrowed from Montesquieu and Rousseau. Maybe he had read them both and learned something from each. I do not know. But I doubt that Paine ever borrowed a line from any man... 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. Paine would have been the last to look upon himself as a man of letters. Liberty was the dear companion of his heart; truth in all things his object. ...we, perhaps, remember him best for his declaration: 'The world is my country; to do good my religion.' Again we see the spontaneous genius at work in 'The Rights of Man', and that genius busy at his favorite task - liberty. Written hurriedly and in the heat of controversy, 'The Rights of Man' yet compares favorably with classical models, and in some places rises to vaulting heights. Its appearance outmatched events attending Burke's effort in his 'Reflections'. Instantly the English public caught hold of this new contribution. It was more than a defense of liberty; it was a world declaration of what Paine had declared before in the Colonies. His reasoning was so cogent, his command of the subject so broad, that his legion of enemies found it hard to answer him. 'Tom Paine is quite right,' said Pitt, the Prime Minister, 'but if I were to encourage his views we should have a bloody revolution.' Here we see the progressive quality of Paine's genius at its best. 'The Rights of Man' amplified and reasserted what already had been said in 'Common Sense', with now a greater force and the power of a maturing mind. Just when Paine was at the height of his renown, an indictment for treason confronted him. About the same time he was elected a member of the Revolutionary Assembly and escaped to France. So little did he know of the French tongue that addresses to his constituents had to be translated by an interpreter. But he sat in the assembly. Shrinking from the guillotine, he encountered Robespierre's enmity, and presently found himself in prison, facing that dread instrument. But his imprisonment was fertile. Already he had written the first part of 'The Age of Reason' and now turned his time to the latter part. Presently his second escape cheated Robespierre of vengeance, and in the course of events 'The Age of Reason' appeared. Instantly it became a source of contention which still endures. Paine returned to the United States a little broken, and went to live at his home in New Rochelle - a public gift. Many of his old companions in the struggle for liberty avoided him, and he was publicly condemned by the unthinking. {The Philosophy of Paine, June 7, 1925}

Read is my life life is an adventure read = adventure

Happiness is only for the honest-that’s a law that runs through matter as undetectable as gravity

The attitude which the man in the street unconsciously adopts towards science is capricious and varied. At one moment he scorns the scientist for a highbrow, at another anathematizes him for blasphemously undermining his religion; but at the mention of a name like Edison he falls into a coma of veneration. When he stops to think, he does recognize, however, that the whole atmosphere of the world in which he lives is tinged by science, as is shown most immediately and strikingly by our modern conveniences and material resources. A little deeper thinking shows him that the influence of science goes much farther and colors the entire mental outlook of modern civilised man on the world about him.

There is NO substitute for hard work!

We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present’ – Thomas Alva Edison

If Charles F. Kettering or Thomas Alva Edison or Henry Ford had been put to work digging ditches under duress, one could calculate approximately how much energy or work could have been got out of them. Left to their own devices, as they were, it is impossible to say how much energy they actually released into production.

Un día, Thomas Alva Edison llegó de la escuela a la casa y le entregó a su mamá una nota. Él le dijo: “Mi maestro me dio esta nota y me dijo que sólo se la diera a mi madre.” Los ojos de su madre estaban llenos de lágrimas cuando ella leyó en voz alta la carta que le trajo su hijo. “Su hijo es un genio, esta escuela es muy pequeña para él y no tenemos buenos maestros para enseñarle, por favor enséñele usted”. Muchos años después la madre de Edison falleció, y él fue uno de los más grandes inventores del siglo. Un día él estaba mirando algunas cosas viejas de la familia. Repentinamente él vio un papel doblado en el marco de un dibujo en el escritorio. Él lo tomó y lo abrió. En el papel estaba escrito: “Su hijo está mentalmente enfermo y no podemos permitirle que venga más a la escuela.” Edison lloró por horas, entonces él escribió en su diario: “Thomas Alva Edison fue un niño mentalmente enfermo, pero por una madre heroica se convirtió en el genio del siglo. “[52] Si cambias a una persona, y esta después cambia el mundo, tú cambiaste el mundo.

Things repeat themselves: people, life, death. But here God is the cameraman's boss, Thomas Alva Edison, he who has done the old biblical Lord one better: made sound that outlasts the life of the voice, light that knows no darkness, and now has made people who do not die, whose images shall remain forever on the earth in celluloid. And, from that which he has created, the light and the phonograph and the moving pictures and so much else, he has made what any true God must make here in America. Money. Piles of the stuff" (343-44).

(The pen would enjoy a second life years later, in the 1890s, when converted into the first electric tattoo needle.)

Young Bell and Edison were the same age, each improving the major invention that the other had come up with first, Edison following Bell, then Bell following Edison. Edison, in fact, had been close to devising a working telephone himself. After Bell’s success, the next best thing for Edison was to come up with an indispensable improvement, the carbon transmitter that captured the human voice far better than Bell’s magnetic design. Edison

Bell invented the telephone while tinkering with acoustic telegraphy; Edison invented the phonograph while tinkering with the telephone.

But one immediate benefit of the press’s marveling was that the extensive coverage supplied Edison with creative ideas about how the phonograph could be adapted for many more uses than telegraphy or senatorial speeches.

I believe that if we are to make any real progress in the psychic investigation, we must do it with scientific apparatus and in a scientific manner, just as we do in medicine, electricity, chemistry, and other fields. —Thomas Alva Edison, interview with Scientific American, 1920

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time” Thomas Alva Edison

Soul of the 20th Century Behind a dusty glass case at the Henry Ford Museum outside Detroit, lies a sealed test tube. It contains the last breath of one Thomas Alva Edison, The Wizard of Menlo Park, whose legacy included 2,332 patents among which were the phonograph, the movie camera and the light bulb. Henry Ford believed the soul of a person resides in their last breath and Henry captured the last breath of his best friend Tom. Most visitors of the museum choose the Ford Rouge Factory Tour to catch a glimpse of an assembly line, neglecting that inside this modest showcase lies imprisoned the most inventive Soul of the 20th century, captured before it could ascend to heaven. Visitors, if you see the test tube, break it and set the Wizard free!

los hombres mueren y los gobiernos cambian, pero las canciones de La Bohéme vivirán siempre. Thomas Alva edison

Edison’s admirers endowed him with fantastical powers that would permit him to invent anything he wished (one

his own willingness to practice Morse code “about 18 hours a day.” (Edison’s capacity for extended bursts of work would be his principal vanity his entire life.) This intensive tutelage soon enabled him to become a professional telegraph operator.

many of his pranks involved electric shock—these stunts gain interest in retrospect, knowing as we do of Edison’s future work on the ultimate instrument of shock, the electric chair. In

invention should not be pursued as an exercise in technical cleverness, but should be shaped by commercial needs.

Nor did he regard his partial deafness as an impediment. He claimed that the deafness was actually an advantage, freeing him from time-wasting small talk and giving him undisturbed time to “think out my problems.” Late in life he would say that he was fortunate to have been spared “all the foolish conversation and other meaningless sounds that normal people hear.

HAVING ONE’S OWN shop, working on projects of one’s own choosing, making enough money today so one could do the same tomorrow: These were the modest goals of Thomas Edison when he struck out on his own as full-time inventor and manufacturer. The grand goal was nothing other than enjoying the autonomy of entrepreneur and forestalling a return to the servitude of employee.

In Edison’s time, the term “bugs” was used exactly as it is today. In

There is NO substitute for had work! Thomas Alva Edison

The versatile inventor Thomas Alva Edison was born in 1847, in the town of Milan, Ohio. He had only three months of formal education, and his schoolmaster considered him to be retarded! Edison

Things repeat themselves: people, life, death. But here God is the cameraman's boss, Thomas Alva Edison, he who has done the old biblical Lord one better: made sound that outlasts the life of the voice, light that knows no darkness, and now has made people who do not die, whose images shall remain forever on the earth in celluloid. And, from that which he has created, the light and the phonograph and the moving pictures and so much else, he has made what any true God must make here in America. Money. Piles of the stuff. (343-44)

युद्ध सुरू झालं, त्या वेळी एडिसन सत्तरीच्या जवळ होता, तरी त्याचे कामाचे तास कमी झाले नव्हते. तो तेव्हाही रोज १६ तास काम करायचा. त्याला विश्रांतीचा किंवा झोपेचा तिटकारा होता. ‘आठ ते दहा तासांची झोप घेणारे लोक कधीच पूर्ण जागे किंवा गाढ झोपलेले नसतात.’ असं त्याचं ठाम मत होतं. एडिसन म्हणायचा, ‘‘मला अगदी थोडी झोप पुरते. मला कधीच स्वप्नं पडत नाहीत. जर चुकून कधी जास्त झोपलो, तर आळसावल्यासारखं वाटतं. थोडी जरी कमी झोप झाली, तरी लोक खूप मोठं नुकसान झाल्यासारखे बोलत असतात. नुकसान झालेलं असतंच, पण ते संधीचं आणि वेळेचं झालेलं असतं, हे त्यांनी लक्षात घेतलं पाहिजे. मी एकदा उत्सुकतेने ब्रिटिश मेडिकल जर्नलचा पूर्ण अभ्यास केला, तेव्हा माझ्या लक्षात आलं की, कमी झोपेमुळे कुणालाही गंभीर आजार वगैरे होत नाहीत.

एडिसनचं उत्तर ऐकल्यानंतरही सहकाऱ्याला पडलेला प्रश्न काही चुकीचा नव्हता. तसं पाहायला गेलं, तर एडिसनच्या आयुष्यात कोणतीही गोष्ट खासगी नव्हती. अगदी लहानपणी त्याने बदकाची अंडी उबवण्याचा प्रयत्न केला होता, तिथपासून विजेचा दिवा बनवताना त्याला किती वेळा अपयश आलं होतं इथपर्यंत सगळ्या गोष्टी जगजाहीर होत्या. त्याच्या लहानपणापासून ते संशोधनाच्या काळापर्यंत कित्येक घडलेल्या आणि न घडलेल्या गोष्टीसुद्धा दंतकथा बनून राहिल्या होत्या. पण तरीही लोकांना अतिशय उपयोगी पडणारे आणि त्यांच्या रोजच्या आयुष्याला नवीन परिमाण देणारे शोध, १०९३ पेटंट्स आणि कित्येक वर्षांनंतरही लोकांच्या मनात टिकून असलेलं ‘हिरो’ म्हणून त्याचं स्थान आणि लोकप्रियता यांचं रहस्य कायम होतं.

लहान असताना अभ्यासात नीट लक्ष न दिल्याने शाळेत हिणवल्या गेलेल्या अॅलच्या मनात स्वतःबद्दल दुर्दम्य विश्वास निर्माण करण्याचं काम नॅन्सीनेच केलं होतं. त्याच्या क्षमतांवर विश्वास ठेवणारी ती पहिली व्यक्ती होती. अनुभव आणि पुस्तकं यांच्यातून स्वतःचं स्वतः शिक्षण घेण्याची नॅन्सीने लावलेली महत्त्वाची सवय एडिसनने आयुष्यभर केलेल्या संशोधनाचा पाया होती. एडिसनने तिच्याबद्दल काढलेले उद्गार खूप प्रसिद्ध आहेत - ‘माझ्या आईने मला घडवलं. तिच्यात खूप सच्चेपणा होता. तिचा माझ्यावर गाढ विश्वास होता आणि तीच माझ्या जगण्याचा उद्देश होती. तिला पाहून एकच वाटायचं, काहीही झालं तरी हिला कधीच निराश करता कामा नये.

कार्बन बटनमुळेच हे यंत्र वापरण्याजोगं झालं असल्याचं शिक्कामोर्तब कोर्टानेही केलं. त्यामुळे आज सगळं जग ग्रॅहम बेलला टेलिफोनचा जनक म्हणून ओळखत असलं, तरी त्या टेलिफोनच्या अस्तित्वाचं महत्त्वाचं श्रेय एडिसनचं आहे.

अपयशांमधून मिळणाऱ्या शिकवणीवर एडिसनचा गाढ विश्वास होता. कोणताही प्रयत्न अपयशी झाला, तरी त्यातून पुढच्या प्रयत्नासाठी काहीतरी धडा मिळतोच, असं त्याचं ठाम मत होतं.

तो वडलांप्रमाणे संशोधक होणार.’ असं सगळे म्हणायचे, पण एडिसनचं मत वेगळं होतं. तो म्हणायचा, ‘‘थिएडोर हुशार आहे खरा, पण त्याला खरा रस गणितात आहे. त्यामुळे तो आइनस्टाइनचा चाहता होण्याची दाट शक्यता आहे. जर असं झालं, तर तो माझ्याबरोबर कधीच काम करणार नाही, अशी मला शंका वाटते.

प्रत्येक संकटात काहीतरी चांगलं दडलेलं असतं. आमच्या सगळ्या चुका आगीत जळून खाक झाल्या, हे सुदैवच म्हणायला पाहिजे! आता आम्हाला नव्याने सुरुवात करता येईल.

वास्तविक, हजारो पेटंट्स घेताना, वेगवेगळ्या संकल्पनांवर काम करताना एडिसनला कितीतरी वेळा अपयश आलं. त्याचे कित्येक शोध फसले, त्याचे भरपूर पैसेही वाया गेले, पण कदाचित त्याच्या जगण्याच्या कल्पना यश आणि अपयशाच्या पलीकडच्या होत्या. यश-अपयशापेक्षा शोधाच्या मार्गावर फक्त चालत राहणं, इतकंच त्याला माहीत होतं. म्हणूनच हजारो शोध लावणाऱ्या एडिसनच्या संशोधनाचं रहस्य शोधायला गेलं, तर ‘प्रयत्न करत राहा’ या एका साध्यासोप्या सूत्राशिवाय बाकी काहीच हाती लागत नाही.

I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." - Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931)

Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time. —Thomas Alva Edison

I failed myself to success. —Thomas Alva Edison It is hard to fail, but it is worse never to have tried to succeed. —Theodore Roosevelt

Hay una frase muy conocida de Thomas Alva Edison: «El genio es 1% de inspiración y 99 % de transpiración». No sabemos cuánto será el porcentaje de cada cosa para cada invento y creación de la humanidad, pero sí estamos seguros de que estos dos factores son fundamentales para la creación de progreso e innovación: inspiración y transpiración. Pero ¿por qué traemos esto a colación? Sencillo: si Edison hubiera tenido que transpirar ese 99 % para el gobierno, para pagar impuestos excesivos, para superar burocracias o para financiar un Estado de Bienestar, no habría podido, sin lugar a duda, crear la bombilla de luz y otros grandes inventos, tal como también lo hizo (e incluso mucho más) el gran Nikola Tesla.

Una industria nacida de aplicar la ciencia a la mecánica fue la industria eléctrica que desarrolló Thomas Alva Edison (1847-1931). A través de sus investigaciones logró utilizar la electricidad para hacer luz, haciendo circular una corriente eléctrica a lo largo de un filamento de carbón. Además Edison creó un primer gran laboratorio en Menlo Park, Nueva Jersey, uno de los primeros centros dedicados exclusivamente a la investigación científica. En 1879 su equipo de investigación había “inventado” las bombillas. Ese mismo año Edison trajo a más de 3.000 personas a su fábrica para hacer una pequeña demostración: iluminó su fábrica y todas las calles del vecindario con miles de bombillas. Todos quedaron maravillados. Edison fue un científico muy completo. Sus aportaciones al mundo del cine fueron también muy importantes.

SAMUEL MORSE

Thomas Alva Edison, the great American inventor, once said: "I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work." Edison knew the power of failure in giving us a feedback, on what we are doing wrong, and how we can improve ourselves. Many people we know are afraid of taking the first step, taking a risk and moving away from their comfort zone. They are afraid of the difficulty that the first step poises. Of