Quotes by Alexander Graham Bell

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

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods.

The inventor...looks upon the world and is not contented with things as they are. He wants to improve whatever he sees, he wants to benefit the world; he is haunted by an idea.

Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires.

Mr. Watson -- Come here -- I want to see you.
First intelligible words spoken over the telephone.

I have heard articulate speech produced by sunlight I have heard a ray of the sun laugh and cough and sing! … I have been able to hear a shadow, and I have even perceived by ear the passage of a cloud across the sun's disk.

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.

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.

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.

Wherever you may find the inventor, you may give him wealth or you may take from him all that he has; and he will go on inventing. He can no more help inventing that he can help thinking or breathing.

Morse conquered his electrical difficulties although he was only a painter, and I don't intend to give in either till all is completed.

A man's own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself.

Ordinary people who know nothing of phonetics or elocution have difficulties in understanding slow speech composed of perfect sounds, while they have no difficulty in comprehending an imperfect gabble if only the accent and rhythm are natural.

Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

The achievement of one goal should be the starting point of another.

One day there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA.

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.

The final result of our researches has widened the class of substances sensitive to light vibrations, until we can propound the fact of such sensitiveness being a general property of all matter.

Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone.

When one door closes, another one opens.

What this power is, I cannot say... All I know is that it exists.

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.

The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world.

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

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

Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids.

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.