What do we think about besides the light bulb when the name Thomas Edison pops up ?

He had light in a lot of other areas. He was a very smart and good man.

We toured his winter estate in Ft Myers last week while visiting Florida. If you get a chance to go you will not be disappointed, but will come away with more gratitude and understanding than when you began. I purchased a small green book  named “The Edison and Ford Quote Book” put out by the estates. Some quotes have been used many times by others, but there were many insightful ones I hadn’t heard before. He was a very forward thinker.

• “The greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time.”
• “All progress, all success springs from thinking.”
• “The brain can be developed just the same as the muscles can be developed, if one will only take the pains to train the mind to think, Why do so many men never amount to anything? Because they don’t think.”
• “Great ideas originate in the muscles.”
• “The world owes nothing to any man, but every man owes something to the world.”
• “My philosophy of life: work and look on the bright side of everything.”
• “I find out what the world needs. Then I go ahead and try to invent it.”
• “Your worth consists in what you are and not in what you have.”
• “What you are will show in what you do.”
• “To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.”
• “The doctor of the future will give no medicine, but will interest his patients in the care of the human body, in diet, and in the cause and prevention of disease.”

These are only a few I selected to share with you…good food for thought.

Tomorrow, we’ll hear some from Henry Ford’s mind.

Thomas Edison, I believe, stated, why should I commit to memory all kinds of knowledge when I can go to a book and find it? (something like that).

All kinds of people with great knowledge about many, many different things have written it down in a book to keep it for other people to read and learn. I love to tap into their knowledge. Why should I have to study as hard as they did in a particular area – there are so many of interest to me – or make all kinds of mistakes doing something I know nothing about when I can learn from someone else who has already been there and done that !?

My brother, who is a cabinet maker, was remaking a carved half round wood piece to go over an old house’s exterior window. The original piece was gone, but the home owners had a old picture of their house showing the particular detail and they wanted it restored.

It was a little bit tricky; not like sawing half of a circle. He took the measurements and then remembered a very old book of our father’s (who was also a cabinet maker) that contained projects and equations for constructing just such a piece. It saved him so much time from having to figure it all out on his own. Here he could turn to a book and see where someone else had already figured it out and written it down. The helpful equation and diagram was still accessible for this future woodworker’s project when they could no longer be asked how to do it.

I love to look at pictures in books, studying all the details of a room, a design and read how it was put together, what their thought process was and why.

There was a period of time when so much was online to read. People wondered about the future of books. but now, more than ever it seems, people are turning to books for help and enjoyment.

How do you feel about books?

• Why are we mean to other humans?
• Why are angry so often?
• Why do we push and shove to get our way?
• Why do we cheat, steal and lie against one another?
• Why do we take advantage of another human being?

Really, we’re already doing all the above things to ourselves, so we just ‘share’ with others how we too often treat ourselves.

The real reason is we don’t know, or we forget there’s a higher love for us involved here. Once we know and can feel love for us, once we know we’re loved by our Maker, then we will treat ourselves with more respect and we will pass that love and respect on to others.

Do you know that love exists for you?