Thomas Edison

Like most people, I have struggled with many things in my life. When pursuing an idea, hope, or dream, it is often easy to just give up and move on to something less challenging. The world is filled with people who have given up on something that, at one time, was very important to them. What would the world be like today if inventors and innovators simply gave up when things became difficult?

Thomas Edison epitomized the word “invention”. But his successes were far from easy, and many of his ideas did not work the way he had expected.

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

Edison was a true optimist. Not only did he have faith in his own abilities, but he also had faith in our abilities as human beings.

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

“Failure” was something that Edison had the wisdom to accept as part of any inventive process, but he didn’t accept failure of one aspect to be the failure of an entire concept.

“Just because something doesn’t do what you planned it to do doesn’t mean it’s useless.”

Imagine if Edison had given up when things didn’t go his way. The things that Thomas Edison invented would likely have been invented by someone else if Edison had failed. But they would have been discovered much later in history. His inventions were a key element of our industrial revolution, which would eventually push the United States into the forefront of technology and innovation.

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