Alexander Graham Bell

Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

We are all too much inclined, I think, to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all round us and right at our very feet that we have never seen, because we have never really looked.