1. Genius is one per cent inspiration and ninety-nine per cent perspiration.
Accordingly, a 'genius' is often merely a talented person who has done all of his
or her homework.
2. Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks
like work.
3. The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your
mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary.
Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some
people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it....
4. I never did anything worth doing entirely by accident.... Almost none of my
inventions came about totally by accident. They were achieved by having trained
myself to endure and tolerate hard work.
5. Personally, I enjoy working about 18 hours a day. Besides the short catnaps I take
each day, I average about four to five hours of sleep per night.
6. My main purpose in life is to make money so I can afford to go on creating more
inventions....
7. My principal business is giving commercial value to the brilliant - but misdirected
- ideas of others....
8. I am quite correctly described as 'more of a sponge than an inventor....'
9. Because I readily absorb ideas from every source - frequently starting where the
last person left off - I never pick up an item without thinking of how I might
improve it.
10. I am not overly impressed by the great names and reputations of those who might
be trying to beat me to an invention.... Its their 'ideas' that appeal to me.
11. Because ideas have to be original only with regard to their adaptation to the
problem at hand, I am always extremely interested in how others have used used
them....
12. A good idea is never lost. Even though its originator or possessor may die, it will
someday be reborn in the mind of another....
13. I never perfected an invention that I did not think about in terms of the service it
might give others... I find out what the world needs , then I proceed to invent....
14. The dove is my emblem.... I want to save and advance human life, not destroy
it.... I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill....
15. Most of the exercise I get is from standing and walking around laboratory tables
all day. I derive more benefit and entertainment from this than some of my friends
and competitors get from playing games like golf.
16. If we all did the things we are really capable of doing, we would literally astound
ourselves....
17. Our schools and are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many
young people have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically
to work....
18. The three things that are most essential to achievement are common sense, hard
work and stick-to-it-iv-ness.....
19. I have far more respect for the person with a single idea who gets there than for
the person with a thousand ideas who does nothing....
20. Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close
they were to success when they gave up.
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