Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
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.
A man, as a general rule, owes very little to what he is born with a man is what he makes of himself.
A man's own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.
Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don't intend to give in either till all is completed.
Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work at hand. The sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus.
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.
The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.
In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.
The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.
Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.
America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men.
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open.
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.
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.
