Alexander Graham Bell quotes

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

Before anything else, preparation is the key to success.
- Alexander Graham Bell

The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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

I would impress upon your minds the fact that if you want to do a man justice, you should believe what a man says himself rather than what people say he says.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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

The most successful men, in the end, are those whose success is the result of steady accretion.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfilment of animal desires.
- Alexander Graham Bell

It is the man who carefully advances step by step...who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Man is the result of slow growth; that is why he occupies the position he does in animal life. What does a pup amount to that has gained its growth in a few days or weeks, beside a man who only attains it in as many years.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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.
- Alexander Graham Bell

I have always considered myself as an Agnostic...
- Alexander Graham Bell

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

Observe, remember, compare.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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 than he can help thinking or breathing.
- Alexander Graham Bell

When one door closes, another one opens.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Leave the beaten track behind occasionally and dive into the woods. Every time you do, you will be certain to find something you have never seen before.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. One discovery will lead to another, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind, and really big discoveries are the result of thought.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.
- Alexander Graham Bell

Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds.
- Alexander Graham Bell

The day will come when the man at the telephone will be able to see the distant person to whom he is speaking.
- Alexander Graham Bell

The great advantage it possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus consists in the fact that it requires no skill to operate the instrument.
- Alexander Graham Bell

The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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.
- Alexander Graham Bell

It is not, of course, complete yet. But, some sentences were understood this afternoon… I feel that I have at last struck the solution of a great problem.
- Alexander Graham Bell

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.
- Alexander Graham Bell