Alexander Graham Bell Quotes (1847-1922)

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

“You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them.”

“You cannot force ideas. Successful ideas are the result of slow growth. Ideas do not reach perfection in a day, no matter how much study is put upon them. It is perseverance in the pursuit of studies that is really wanted.”

“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. The spirit of invention possesses him, seeking materialization.”

“Fleets are not confined to the ocean, but now sail over the land. … All the power of the British Navy has not been able to prevent Zeppelins from reaching England and attacking London, the very heart of the British Empire. Navies do not protect against aerial attack. … Heavier-than-air flying machines of the aeroplane type have crossed right over the heads of armies, of million of men, armed with the most modern weapons of destruction, and have raided places in the rear. Armies do not protect against aerial war.”

“I feel that in this child I have seen more of the Divine than has been manifest in anyone I ever met before.”

“Bell had his own theories about the threat that people with disabilities represented to the future of the species. His mother and wife had both been born deaf, and in 1883 he warned the National Academy of Sciences that unless the use of sign language was vigorously discouraged in schools for the deaf, society ran the risk of engendering "a race of deaf-mutes."”

“Years later I told Alexander Graham Bell of my introduction to the telephone. "Nobody," he said, "can estimate what the teachers of science in colleges and high schools were doing in those days not only to spread knowledge of the telephone but to stir youth to tackle the possibilities in electricity." What I best remember is not the telephone but Professor Tingley's amazing enthusiasm for the telephone. This revelation of enthusiasm, its power to warm and illuminate was one of the finest and most lasting of my college experiences. The people I had known, teachers, preachers, doctors, business men, all went through their day's work either with a stubborn, often sullen determination to do their whole duty, or with an undercurrent of uneasiness, if they found pleasure in duty. They seemed to me to feel that they were not really working if they were not demonstrating the Puritan teaching that labor is a curse. It had never seemed so to me, but I did not dare gloat over it. And here was a teacher who did gloat over his job in all its ramifications. Moreover, he did his best to stir you to share his joy.”