Top 20 Thomas Edison Quotes to Motivate You to Never Quit

Thomas Edison, dubbed the "Wizard of Menlo Park," was one of the greatest inventors the world has known. His nearly 1,100 patents exceed that of any other inventor in American history, and his inventions were foundational across a bewildering array of domains, from electronics to medicine to chemical research.

Never a day goes by where we don't have Edison to thank for the many tools and conveniences of modern life. To him we owe both the incandescent light bulb and fluroescent lamp, the phonograph, the nickel-iron-alkaline storage battery, the universal electric motor, the motion picture, and the basic principles of modern electronics. And that's barely scratching the surface of his contributions, which resulted from painstaking trial-and-error and an indomitable spirit of perseverance that embraced each failed experiment as a positive step forward on the long road to success.

Yet Thomas Edison had neither an easy nor a predictable path towards greatness. He rose from humble beginnings, the last of seven sons and daughters born to a school teacher and an exiled Canadian activist in Milan, Ohio in 1847. A childhood malady left him with hearing issues in both ears that would make him nearly deaf as an adult. And he was a hyperactive and distraction-prone child, who, deemed "difficult" by his teacher, was pulled out of public school by his mother at age 12, after a mere 12 weeks of attendance.

Edison's incredible intellect and ingenuity are all the more inspiring for being the product of his own voracious appetite for learning -- and all the more instructive for arising from a process of self-education that was tailored to harnessing his own unique potential.

Thomas Edison's story has much to teach and inspire us. And with that in mind, here are our Top 20 Thomas Edison Quotes to Motivate You to Never Quit.

Top 20 Thomas Edison Quotes to Motivate You to Never Quit

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

I start where the last man left off.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

If we did all the things we are capable of, we would literally astound ourselves.

When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you haven't.

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

The three great essentials to achieve anything worthwhile are: hard work, stick-to-itiveness, and common sense.

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Results! Why, man, I have gotten a lot of results. I know several thousand things that won't work.

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

Everything comes to him who hustles while he waits.

Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.

I never did anything by accident, nor did any of my inventions come by accident; they came by work.

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

To have a great idea, have a lot of them.

One might think that the money value of an invention constitutes its reward to the man who loves his work. But... I continue to find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward, in the work that precedes what the world calls success.

There's a way to do it better.  Find it.

What you are will show in what you do.

I never did a day's work in my life. It was all fun.