Thomas Alva Edison who held 1,093 patents for diverse inventions, is responsible for greatest and brilliant creations such as the electric lightbulb, the phonograph, and the motion picture camera; and is known to be the most influential figure in the history of science, failed hundreds of times. His teachers considered him to be “too stupid to learn anything.” He was named as “non-productive” by the companies he worked for.
Once a reporter, who’d come to see the demonstration of his newest invention, the electric bulb, asked: “How did it feel to fail 1,000 times?”. To which he replied, “I didn’t fail 1,000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1,000 steps.”
He failed over 1000 times before inventing the light bulb; still he was determined “I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward.” He never gave up, he believed, “Nearly every man who develops an idea works at it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.”
He is the person who changed the whole world. He is known to be one of the first inventors who applied the principles of mass production and initiated large team unity to the process of invention. He is credited with the creation of the very first industrial research laboratory.
Thomas Edison’s Quotes on Failure
““Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ― Thomas A. Edison
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” -Thomas Edison
“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.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“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.”
― Thomas A. Edison
“Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure”
― Thomas A. Edison
You might also like: People Who Changed the World in Business
10 Successful and Famous People who had Dyslexia
