14 Inventors We Love
Inc.com Slideshow

There ain’t no rules around here! We’re trying to accomplish something!
—Thomas Edison

Well done is better than well said.
—Ben Franklin

Errors using inadequate data are much less than those using no data at all.
—Charles Babbage

The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
—Thomas Edison

Believe and act as if it were impossible to fail.
—Charles Kettering

Whether you believe you can, or whether you believe you can’t, you’re absolutelyright.
—Henry Ford

I have not failed. I have merely found ten-thousand ways that won’t work.
—Thomas Edison

Hide not your talents, they for use were made;
what’s a sundial in the shade?
—Benjamin Franklin

Make it a practice to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on.
—Thomas Edison

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Launch Pad

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An enchanted loom where millions of flashing shuttles weave a dissolving pattern, always a meaningful pattern though never an abiding one.
—Sir Charles Sherrington, describing the brain

Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do so you will be certain to find something that you have never seen before.
—Alexander Graham Bell

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure.
—Thomas Edison

I make more mistakes than anyone else I know. And, sooner or later, I patent most of them.
—Thomas Edison

Mr. Watson, come here. I want you.
—Alexander Graham Bell

Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.
—Thomas Edison

We were lucky enough to grow up in an environment where there was always much encouragement to children to pursue intellectual interests; to investigate whatever aroused curiosity.
—Orville Wright

There’s no substitute for hard work.
—Thomas Edison

Success is 99% failure.
—Soichiro Honda

A problem well stated is a problem half solved. 
—Charles Kettering

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To cease to think creatively is but little different from ceasing to live.
—Benjamin Franklin 14

Anything worth doing is worth doing to excess.
—Edwin H. Land

I cannot believe in the immortality of the soul. No, all this talk of an existence for us, as individuals, beyond the grave is wrong. It is born of our tenacity of life—our desire to go on living our dread of coming to an end.
—Thomas Edison