Echoes

Before everything else, getting ready is the secret of success.

By failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.

Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe.

When schemes are laid in advance, it is surprising how often the circumstances fit in with them.

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them.

He that can have patience can have what he will.

Energy and persistence conquer all things.

I will either find a way, or make one.

Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration.

Fortune favors the brave.

The best way to predict the future is to invent it.

Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement; nothing can be done without hope.

Relentless toil conquers all.

The man who has the largest capacity for work and thought is the man who is bound to succeed.

All great events hang by a hair. The man of ability takes advantage of everything and neglects nothing that can give him a chance of success; whilst the less able man sometimes loses everything by neglecting a single one of those chances.

I never did anything worth doing by accident, nor did any of my inventions come indirectly through accident, except the phonograph. No, when I have, fully decided that a result is worth getting, I go about it, and make trial after trial, until it comes.

It seems to be a law of nature, inflexible and inexorable, that those who will not risk cannot win.

The best preparation for tomorrow is to do today's work superbly well.

Great deeds are usually wrought at great risks.

Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.

The beginning is the most important part of the work.

The quality I look for most is optimism: especially optimism in the face of reverses and apparent defeat.

It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare; it is because we do not dare that things are difficult.

Henceforth I ask not good fortune — I myself am good fortune.