“The great advantage [the telephone] possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus consists in the fact that it requires no skill to operate the instrument.”

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

I have travelled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all!

You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.

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 opened for us.

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

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

The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent.

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

When one door closes, another one opens.

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.

Character, my friends, is a byproduct. It is produced in the great manufacture of daily duty.

Great minds always tend to see virtue in misfortune.

Paris flared – Paris, which the divine sun had sown with light, and where in glory waved the great future harvest of Truth and of Justice.

It is not in the nature of true greatness to be exclusive and arrogant.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself; but each of us can work to change a small portion of events, and in the total; of all those acts will be written the history of this generation.

A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a truth.

Great ladies are no more spiteful than the average rich woman; but one acquires in their society a greater susceptibility, and feels more profoundly andmore irremediably, their unpleasant remarks.

The fate of animals is of greater importance to me than the fear of appearing ridiculous; it is indissolubly connected with the fate of men.