The Quotable Edison

by Michele Wehrwein Albion

The voice of the man who turned on the lights for the world   "Edison dispensed his opinions on every topic from microbes to the meaning of life."--Thomas Graham, author of Flagler’s St. Augustine Hotels "Michele Albion gives us a treat by carefully peeling back time and history to expose Thomas Edison’s complex, and beautiful natural wood grain. You will laugh, ponder, and ruminate about the great man and his views; and his observations about life, technology and the future. It certainly is an interesting read."--John P. Keegan, president and chair of the Charles Edison Fund, Edison Innovation Foundation "In times when the phrase techno-wizard means the latest Web sensation, the greatest wizard of them all comes to life again in this collection."--Joy Wallace Dickinson, author of Remembering Orlando  Thomas Edison was the "Wizard of Menlo Park." A prolific inventor and holder of numerous patents, he was also called a "magician," "the Napoleon of Science," and the "Inventor of the Age." But he was also a practical joker, a self-made man with a certain disdain for polite society, an ambitious explorer, and a public intellectual.   The Quotable Edison offers a wealth of his insightful, enlightening, and sometimes humorous comments and witticisms on a wide range of subjects, from business to politics, from religion to nutrition, from advice to boys to opinions on women’s clothing.  Famous for his dictum that "Genius is one percent inspiration, ninety-nine percent perspiration," Edison offered many other gems.      - On religion, "Satan is the scarecrow of the religious cornfield." - On the English, "The English are not an inventive people; they don’t eat enough pie." - On work and business, "I’ve been working two shifts most of my life. Lots of other men work two shifts too, but [they] devote the other one to poker." - On the law, "A lawsuit is the suicide of time." And his reported final "It’s very beautiful over there."   Michele Wehrwein Albion , curator of the Edison and Ford Winter Estates from 1992 to 1997 and former curatorial staff at the United States Holocaust Museum, is the author of The Florida Life of Thomas Edison . She lives in Dover, New Hampshire.

240 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

About the author

From the time she was a small child, Michele Wehrwein has been passionate about history. ("I remember making museum exhibits with my toys. The exhibit labels were marked with x's because I couldn't read.") So it is no surprise that she landed her first museum job at 14. After several summers as a tour guide, she helped catalog artifacts. Her life-long dream was to become a museum curator.

Miss Wehrwein graduated from the University of Maine with a degree in history and spent summers and school breaks working at museums. Then it was off to graduate school. She received a Masters in Museum Studies from The George Washington University and worked at the United States Holocaust Museum where she helped research and prepare objects for exhibit. "It was a humbling experience to know that the artifacts I handled would speak to generations about the infamy of the Holocaust," she said.

In 1992, Miss Wehrwein was hired as the first professional curator of the Edison and Ford Winter Estates in Fort Myers, Florida. In a field where curatorial jobs were scarce, it was the realization of a life's dream. "The problem was, I was only 25. It was pretty obvious I needed a new dream," she confesses. She decided to write about Thomas and Mina Edison and their home, Seminole Lodge. "I began with a column in the local paper. It was awful, actually. I had a lot to learn about writing history, but it was a start."

While in Florida Miss Wehrwein met and married her husband, James. After five years at the Edison and Ford, their daughter was born and the family moved to New Hampshire. The family now includes three more children and a codependent cat. Miss Wehrwein confesses that writing is a struggle as she tries to balance the demands of a large family. But she is grateful that her love of history and museums has coalesced and manifested itself in The Florida Life of Thomas Edison.

Reviews

[David Shane · Rating 5 out of 5]

Delightful book, picked it up at the Edison estate in Fort Myers. One might question how much you can understand a man just by reading a couple hundred pages of organized quotations from him. One feels you understand Edison pretty well after this.

Editor does note they were very careful (because we all know the internet) only to include verified quotations in this book.

[Phillis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Delving into the lives of history icons sure makes you think about them as real people.It helps to understand what it was like back when they lived. Edison was an amazing man. His mind never stopped. That is not to say he was successful in all he did, but it should never be that way.As a true inventor he almost never gave up. Today we are better for it.