Thomas A. Edison People Quotations

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

Most people don't recognize opportunity when it comes, because it's usually dressed in overalls and looks a lot like work.

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

That is to say, under the old way any time we wish to add to the national wealth we are compelled to add to the national debt. Now, that is what Henry Ford wants to prevent. He thinks it is stupid, and so do I, that for the loan of $30,000,000 of their own money the people of the United States should be compelled to pay $66,000,000 - that is what it amounts to, with interest.

I try not to invent things that people don't need.

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.

Failure is really a matter of conceit. People don't work hard because, in their conceit, they imagine they'll succeed without ever making an effort. Most people believe that they'll wake up some day and find themselves rich. Actually, they've got it half right, because eventually they do wake up.

Incurably religious, that is the best way to describe the mental condition of so many people.

It is remarkable to what lengths people will go to avoid thought.

Five percent of the people think; ten percent of the people think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.

The strength of the Constitution, lies in the will of the people to defend it.

There is much more opportunity than there are people to see it.

People who will not turn a shovel full of dirt on the project (Muscle Shoals Dam) 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.

Most of my ideas belonged to other people who never bothered to develop them.

People are not remembered by how few times they fail, but by how often they succeed. Every wrong step is another step forward

The trouble with most people is that they quit before they start.

It is the people who constitute the basis of Government credit. Why then cannot the people have benefit of their own gilt-edge credit by receiving non-interest bearing currency-instead of bankers receiving the benefit of the people's credit in interest-bearing bonds. If the United States Government will adopt this policy of increasing its national wealth without contributing to the interest collector-for the whole national debt is made up on interest charges-then you will see an era of progress and prosperity in this country such as could never have come otherwise.