"All progress, all success, springs from thinking." -Thomas Edison
To do much clear thinking a person must arrange for regular periods of solitude when they can concentrate and indulge the imagination without distraction.
The brain can be developed the same as the muscles can be developed, if one will only take the pains to train the mind to think!
The hours which I have spent alone with Mr. Edison have brought me the real big returns of my life; to it I attribute all I have accomplished.
The first requisite for success is to develop the ability to focus and apply your mental and physical energies to the problem at hand - without growing weary. Because such thinking is often difficult, there seems to be no limit to which some people will go to avoid the effort and labor that is associated with it.
I am of the opinion that only about five percent of people think. About ten percent think they think; and the other eighty-five percent would rather die than think.
It is astonishing what an effort it seems to be for many people to put their brains definitely and systematically to work.
The best thinking has been done in solitude. The worst has been done in turmoil.
Somewhere between the ages of eleven and fifteen, the average child begins to suffer from an atrophy, the paralysis of curiosity and the suspension of the power to observe. The trouble I should judge to lie with the schools.
Our schools are not teaching students to think. It is astonishing how many young people have difficulty in putting their brains definitely and systematically to work.
Our system of education is a relic of past ages. The trouble with our way of education as generally followed is that it does not give elasticity to the mind. It casts the brain into a mould. It insists that the child must accept. It does not encourage original thought of reasoning, and it lays more stress on memory than observation. It breeds fear and from fear comes ignorance. - This a compilation of quotes from Thomas Edison.
