Edison

"Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless."
—Thomas A. Edison

"If I find 10,000 ways something won't work, I haven't failed. I am not discouraged, because every wrong attempt discarded is another step forward."
—Thomas Edison

"I am proud of the fact that I never invented weapons to kill."
—Thomas Edison

"There is no expedient to which a man will not go to avoid the labor of thinking."
—Thomas Edison

"The value of an idea lies in the using of it."
—Thomas Edison

"To my mind the old masters are not art; their value is in their scarcity."
—Thomas Edison

"Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have."
—Thomas Edison

"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."

—Thomas Edison

Tesla

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”
-Nikola Tesla

The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost.”
-Nikola Tesla

The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; First, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.”
-Nikola Tesla


"If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search.
I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor.”
-Nikola Tesla


“My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.”
-Nikola Tesla

Frederick Douglass on struggle and progress

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning.

It is not light that we need, but fire; it is not the gentle shower, but thunder. We need the storm, the whirlwind, and the earthquake."

-Frederick Douglass

Practice without theory - Da Vinci

He who loves practice without theory is like the sailor who boards ship without a rudder and compass and never knows where he may cast. 

– Leonardo da Vinci

Long for the sea...

"If you want to build a ship, don't drum up people together to collect wood and assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." 

-Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Wading the River

A man on foot, with his clothes in a bundle, coming to a stream which he must ford, made elaborate preparations by stripping off his garments, adding them to his bundle, and tying all to the top of a stick, which enabled him to raise the bundle high over his head to keep them dry during the crossing. He then fearlessly waded in and carefully made his way across the rippling stream, and found it in no place up to his ankles.

-Abraham Lincoln

Edgar Allan Poe

Music, when combined with a pleasurable idea, is poetry; music without the idea is simply music; the idea without the music is prose from its very definitiveness.
-Edgar Allan Poe