Dream bigger. Do bigger.

Push yourself, because no one else is going to do it for you.

The harder you work for something, the greater you’ll feel when you achieve it.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream.

The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.

The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.

Don’t watch the clock; do what it does. Keep going.

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.

Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot, but make it hot by striking.

My knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands.

Opportunities don’t happen. You create them.

Hard work beats talent when talent doesn’t work hard.

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions.

Grand telegraphic discovery today … Transmitted vocal sounds for the first time … With some further modification I hope we may be enabled to distinguish … the “timbre” of the sound. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli.

It is not, of course, complete yet – but some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem – and the day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home.

The only limit to our realization of tomorrow is our doubts of today.

You cannot expect to achieve new goals or move beyond your present circumstances unless you change.

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

God has strewn our paths with wonders and we certainly should not go through life with our eyes shut.

Dumbness comes from the fact that a child is born deaf and that it consequently never learns how to articulate, for it is by the medium of hearing that such instruction is acquired.

Our ability to achieve success depends on the strength of our desire.

It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.

Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires.

I have always considered myself as an Agnostic.

America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.

It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider – who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

To be successful, you must accept all challenges that come your way.

There cannot be mental atrophy in any person who continues to observe, to remember what he observes, and to seek answers for his unceasing hows and whys about things.

Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation.

The only way to do great work is to love what you do.

The inventor is a man who looks around upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.

The path to success is to take massive, determined action.

First words on the first telephone – “Mr. Watson – come here – I want to see you.

I have discovered that my interest in my dear pupil, Mabel, has ripened into a far deeper feeling than that of mere friendship. In fact, I know that I have learned to love her very sincerely.

When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.

There is no substitute for hard work.

Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.

It is a neck-and-neck race between Mr. Gray and myself who shall complete our apparatus first. He has the advantage over me in being a practical electrician – but I have reason to believe that I am better acquainted with the phenomena of sound than he is – so that I have an advantage there.

Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone.

One day every major city in America will have a telephone.

It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say ‘oral method’ to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say ‘sign language’ to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment.

A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with.

Every success is built on the ability to do better than good enough.

Observe, Remember, Compare.

I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anaesthetics.

The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking.

The teacher is the one who gets the most out of the lessons, and the true teacher is the one who can teach others.

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.

Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don’t intend to give in either till all is completed.

The most successful people are those who are good at plan B.

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

The mind is like a fertile garden in which anything that is planted, flowers or weeds, will grow.

The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another.

The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid on to houses just like water or gas.

The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.

The more I know, the more I realize how much I don’t know.

The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.

What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.

Science is a beautiful gift to humanity; we should not distort it.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.

When one door closes, another one opens.

Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.

The only difference between a successful person and others is how long they spend time feeling sorry for themselves.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.

Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus.

What this power is, I cannot say… All I know is that it exists.

When one door closes, another opens; but we often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us.