12 Inspiring Quotes from Thomas Edison

Here at are a few of Datavo's favorite quotes by Thomas Edison, one of the fathers of the telephone.

• I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.

• Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration.

• Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is always to try just one more time.

• Hell, there are no rules here - we're trying to accomplish something.

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

• Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages.

• Maturity is often more absurd than youth and very frequently is most unjust to youth.

• Anything that won't sell, I don't want to invent. Its sale is proof of utility, and utility is success.

• Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That's not the place to become discouraged.

• The reason a lot of people do not recognize opportunity is because it usually goes around wearing overalls looking like hard work.

• Being busy does not always mean real work. The object of all work is production or accomplishment and to either of these ends there must be forethought, system, planning, intelligence, and honest purpose, as well as perspiration. Seeming to do is not doing.

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

14 Quotes About Positive Thinking

Hope you are having a great day. We love quotes here at Datavo, so we thought we would share some of our favorites about positive attitudes.

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort. ~Herm Albright

Life is a shipwreck but we must not forget to sing in the lifeboats. ~Voltaire

Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference. ~Winston Churchill

Every day may not be good, but there's something good in every day. ~Author Unknown

The sun shines and warms and lights us and we have no curiosity to know why this is so; but we ask the reason of all evil, of pain, and hunger, and mosquitoes and silly people. ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

If you don't like something change it; if you can't change it, change the way you think about it.~Mary Engelbreit

Every thought is a seed. If you plant crab apples, don't count on harvesting Golden Delicious. ~Bill Meyer

To be upset over what you don't have is to waste what you do have. ~Ken S. Keyes, Jr.

The only disability in life is a bad attitude. ~Scott Hamilton

I don't like that man. I must get to know him better. ~Abraham Lincoln

To be wronged is nothing unless you continue to remember it.~Confucius

I don't think of all the misery but of the beauty that still remains. ~Anne Frank

You can't stop the waves, but you can learn how to surf. ~Jon Kabat-Zinn

Change your thoughts and you change your world. ~Norman Vincent Peale

10 More Motivational Quotes to Start Your Day

Here at Datavo we know that running a business is hard work and you can sometimes start feeling scared and powerless. So we came up with another list of motivational quotes to help you through your day.

• I had to make my own living and my own opportunity! But I made it! Don’t sit down and wait for the opportunities to come. Get up and make them! – C.J. Walker

Richard Branson

• The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it. – Debbi Fields

• Business opportunities are like buses, there’s always another one coming. – Richard Branson

• I like thinking big. If you’re going to be thinking anything, you might as well think big. – Donald Trump

• Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. – Bill Gates

• I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. – Oprah Winfrey

Oprah Winfrey

• Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes. It is best to admit them quickly and get on with improving your other innovations. – Steve Jobs

• Success in business requires training and discipline and hard work. But if you’re not frightened by these things, the opportunities are just as great today as they ever were. – David Rockefeller

• The enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth-persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. – John F. Kennedy

• In all realms of life it takes courage to stretch your limits, express your power, and fulfill your potential. It’s no different in the financial realm. – Suze Orman

For more motivational quotes check out our blog 20 Great Motivational Quotes to Start Your Day. Feel free to leave any of your favorite quotes in the comments.

9 Quotes About the Telephone

Take a look at Datavo's favorite quotes on the telephone.

• "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." ~ Alexander Graham Bell

• 'Watson, ... if I can get a mechanism which will make a current of electricity vary in its intensity, as the air varies in density when a sound is passing through it, I can telegraph any sound, even the sound of speech.' ~ Alexander Graham Bell

• I have read somewhere that the resistance offered by a wire ... is affected by the tension of the wire. If this is so, a continuous current of electricity passed through a vibrating wire should meet with a varying resistance, and hence a pulsatory action should be induced in the current ... [corresponding] in amplitude, as well as in rate of movement, to the vibrations of the string ... [Thus] the timbre of a sound [a quality essential to intelligible speech] could be transmitted ... [and] the strength of the current can be increased ad libitum without destroying the relative intensities of the vibrations. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

• I then shouted into M [the mouthpiece] the following sentence: 'Mr. Watson-—Come here—I want to see you.' To my delight he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered 'You said—'Mr. Watson—-come here—I want to see you.' We then changed places and I listened at S [the reed receiver] while Mr. Watson read a few passages from a book into the mouth piece M. It was certainly the case that articulate sounds proceeded from S. The effect was loud but indistinct and muffled. If I had read beforehand the passage given by Mr. Watson I should have recognized every word. As it was I could not make out the sense—but an occasional word here and there was quite distinct. I made out 'to' and 'out' and 'further'; and finally the sentence 'Mr. Bell do you understand what I say? Do—you—un—der—stand—what—I—say' came quite clearly and intelligibly. No sound was audible when the armature S was removed. ~ Alexander Graham Bell

• As to Bell's talking telegraph, it only creates interest in scientific circles, and, as a toy it is beautiful; but ... its commercial value will be limited. ~ Elisha Gray

• TELESCOPE, n. A device having a relation to the eye similar to that of the telephone to the ear, enabling distant objects to plague us with a multitude of needless details. Luckily it is unprovided with a bell summoning us to the sacrifice. ~ Ambrose Bierce

• TELEPHONE, n. An invention of the devil which abrogates some of the advantages of making a disagreeable person keep his distance. ~ Ambrose Bierce

• Every improvement that is put upon the real estate is the result of an idea in somebody's head. The skyscraper is another idea; the railroad is another; the telephone and all those things are merely symbols which represent ideas. An andiron, a wash-tub, is the result of an idea that did not exist before. ~ Mark Twain

• If you had come to me a hundred years ago, do you think I should have dreamed of the telephone? Why, even now I cannot understand it! I use it every day, I transact half my correspondence by means of it, but I don’t understand it. Thnk of that little stretched disk of iron at the end of a wire repeating in your ear not only sounds, but words—not only words, but all the most delicate and elusive inflections and nuances of tone which separate one human voice from another! Is not that something of a miracle? ~  Sir William Crookes

20 Great Motivational Quotes to Start Your Day

Do you find yourself needing motivation? Datavo has collected a few motivational quotes to get the fire inside you burning so that you can be great. 

Leonardo da Vinci

• “Life is pretty simple: You do some stuff. Most fails. Some works. You do more of what works. If it works big, others quickly copy it. Then you do something else. The trick is the doing something else.” - Leonardo da Vinci

• "Only those who will risk going too far can possibly find out how far one can go." - T.S. Eliot

• “It's not the size of the dog in the fight, it's the size of the fight in the dog.” - Mark Twain

• "I hated every minute of training, but I said, 'Don't quit. Suffer now and live the rest of your life as a champion.' " - Muhammad Ali

• “A business has to be involving, it has to be fun, and it has to exercise your creative instincts.” - Richard Branson

• “Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” - André Gide

• “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” - Winston Churchill

Albert Einstein

• “Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.” - Albert Einstein

• “We should not teach children the sciences; but give them a taste for them.” - Jean Jacques Rousseau 

• “It matters not the number of years in your life. It is the life in your years.” - Abraham Lincoln 

• “Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself.” - Cicero

• “You have to expect things of yourself before you can do them.” - Michael Jordan 

• “No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess” - Newton 

• “I have no special talents. I am only passionately curious.” - Albert Einstein 

Nelson Mandela

• “One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested.” - E. M. Forster 

• “When the water starts boiling it is foolish to turn off the heat.” - Nelson Mandela

• “Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” - Thomas Edison

• “When you innovate, you’ve got to be prepared for everyone telling you you’re nuts.” -Larry Ellison 

• “All that counts in life is intention.” - Andrea Bocell

• “Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.” - Emerson

Feel free to leave any quotes you think we left out in the comments.

6 Quotes from Alexander Graham Bell

If you don't know who Alexander Graham Bell is you must live under a rock! Most likely you use his invention everyday - the TELEPHONE of course!

Alexander Graham Bell c. 1914-1919

Not only was he credited for inventing the telephone he also invented many other things in the fields of  optical telecommunications, aeronautics, and hydrofoils. He went into the field of researching hearing and speech technologies due to this mother and wife being deaf.

Here are 6 of his most profound quotes:

"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."

"Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."

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

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

"Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."

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

In 1888, he helped found the National Geographic Society and is looked at as one of the most influential people in human history. Datavo salutes him!