AboutHow we built thisSponsorshipShopSearchSubscribeDecision ToolsBusiness ModelsFrameworksReading ListsPrivacy PolicyTerms of UseCookie PolicyRefund PolicyAccessibilityDisclaimer

© 2026 Faster Than Normal. All rights reserved.

Faster Than Normal
PeopleBusinessesShopNewsletter
Ask a question →
  1. Home
  2. Quotes
  3. Thomas Edison

Thomas Edison Quotes

18 quotes from Thomas Edison — Inventor and businessman who developed the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the practical electric light bulb….

Read the full Thomas Edison playbook →

“There are no rules here – we're trying to accomplish something.”

Innovation

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

Perseverance

“Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.”

Hard Work

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

Potential

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

Perseverance

“There is no substitute for hard work.”

Hard Work

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

Perseverance

“We often miss opportunity because it's dressed in overalls and looks like work.”

Opportunity

“There's a way to do it better – find it.”

Innovation

“I never did a day's work in my life, it was all fun.”

Work

“When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this – you haven't.”

Perseverance

“Negative results are just what I want. They're just as valuable to me as positive results.”

Learning

“I will have the best equipped & largest Laboratory extant and the facilities incomparably superior to any other for rapid & cheap development of an invention.”

— Thomas Edison, letter to Western Union, 1876

“Here now were echoes made hard, resounding as often as anyone wanted to hear them.”

— Edmund Morris, *Edison*

“I never had an idea in my life. My so-called inventions already existed in the environment—I took them out. I've created nothing. Nobody does. There's no such thing as an idea being brain-born; everything comes from the outside.”

— Thomas Edison

“My mother was the making of me. She understood me; she let me follow my bent.”

— Thomas Edison

“Work—bringing out the secrets of nature and applying them for the happiness of man.”

— Thomas Edison, on his seventy-seventh birthday

“Few men have possessed to such a striking degree the blending of the imagination of the dreamer with the practical, driving force of the doer. In the record of his inventions and improvements rests the unimpeachable testimony that he has brought things to pass.”

— Calvin Coolidge, presenting Edison the Congressional Gold Medal, October 20, 1928

Continue exploring

Thomas Edison

Person

Thomas Edison

Inventor and businessman who developed the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the practical electric light bulb…