70+ Best Alexander Graham Bell Quotes

Born in Scotland, Alexander Graham Bell is one of the most influential figures from history.

Although Alexander wasn't the most confident when it came to academics, science and technology always piqued the best of his interests and his fascination with science helped him gain impressive problem-solving abilities. Even his playtime in a grain field motivated him to improve the slow wheat husk separation process by inventing a machine which used paddles that rotated and nail brushes to make the process faster!

He spent his late teenage researching on human speech. Later he went on to work on electronic speech during his time as a teacher of the deaf in the US. This venture may have been motivated by the fact that both his mother and wife were deaf. He wanted to invent a machine which could send multiple messages using wires, and during his work on this, he became more fascinated by the possibility of sending message of human voices instead. His determination towards his newfound goal eventually led him to one of his most famous inventions, the telephone. His first words spoken on telephone to his assistant, Thomas Watson, were "Mr Watson, come here. I want to see you." This is now an iconic line.

It is undoubtable that Alexander Graham Bell was a hard worker, as seen in his description that "the Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus" He was a visionary who wanted to change the world, not just by himself, but, by inspiring all the other inventors around the world. He describes an inventor as someone who "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."

We hope you enjoy each Alexander Graham Bell quote below and if you would like more such quotes by inventors and innovators, do take a look at our Alan Turing quotes and Alan Moore quotes.

Alexander Graham Bell was a highly motivated individual with many famous quotes. His views on life were greatly inspired by his spur to achieve his dreams.

1. "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.

2.  "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.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

5. "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.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

7. "It is the man who carefully advances step by step...who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

8. "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.

9. "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.

10. "I have always considered myself as an Agnostic..."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

Quotes from Alexander Graham Bell are just the motivation you need for the inventor within you.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

12. "The inventor is a man who looks around 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."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

13. "Observe, remember, compare."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

14. "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.

15. "When one door closes, another one opens."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

16. "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.

17. "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.

18. "Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

20. "Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The Sun's rays do not burn until brought to a focus."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

If you love quotes from inventors, Alexander Graham Bell quotes about his most revolutionary invention, the telephone will fascinate you.

21. "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.

22.  "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.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

24. "The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

25. "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.

26. "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."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

27. "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.

28. "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.

29. "In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

30. "The day is coming when telegraph wires will be laid onto houses just like water or gas – and friends converse with each other without leaving home."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

Alexander has had many key moments that played a significant role in how his life turned out to be.

31. "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."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

32. "From my earliest childhood, my attention was specially directed to the subject of acoustics, and especially to the subject of speech, and I was urged by my father to study everything relating to these subjects, as they would have an important bearing upon what was to be my professional work."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

33. "I have discovered that my interest in my dear pupil, Mabel, has ripened into a far deeper feeling than that of mere friendship. In fact, I know that I have learned to love her very sincerely."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

34. "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."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

36. "It is hardly an exaggeration to say that oral teachers and sign teachers found it difficult to sit down in the same room without quarreling, and there was intolerance upon both sides. To say 'oral method' to a sign teacher was like waving a red flag in the face of a bull, and to say 'sign language' to an oralist aroused the deepest resentment."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

37. "Dumbness comes from the fact that a child is born deaf and that it consequently never learns how to articulate, for it is by the medium of hearing that such instruction is acquired."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

38. "Can imagination picture what the future of this invention is to be!... We may talk by light to any visible distance without any conduction wire... In general science, discoveries will be made by the photophone that are undreamed of just now."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

39. "Another discovery which came out of my investigation was the fact that when a man gives his order to produce a definite result and stands by that order it seems to have the effect of giving him what might be termed a second sight which enables him to see right through ordinary problems."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

40. "To my delight, he came and declared that he had heard and understood what I said. I asked him to repeat the words. He answered, 'You said, Mr. Watson, come here I want to see you'."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

Alexander, during his work, always had the nations' and people's best interests in mind. Take a look at some of his quotes that will surely make you wonder.

41. "A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

42. "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."

-Alexander Graham Bell, in a letter to his father, Alexander Melville Bell.

43. "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."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

44. "There are two critical points in every aerial flight - its beginning and its end."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

45. "I have had the feeling that a properly constructed flying-machine should be capable of being flown as a kite; and conversely, that a properly constructed kite should be capable of use as a flying-machine when driven by its own propellers."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

46. "Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

47. "I have traveled around the globe. I have seen the Canadian and American Rockies, the Andes, the Alps and the Highlands of Scotland, but for simple beauty, Cape Breton outrivals them all!"

-Alexander Graham Bell.

48. "America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspapermen."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

These famous inventor quotes by Alexander Graham Bell are sure to keep your mind occupied.

51. "Before anything else, preparation is the key to success."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

52. "My knowledge of electrical subjects was not acquired in a methodical manner but was picked up from such books as I could get hold of and from such experiments as I could make with my own hands."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

53. "Perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

54. "Be not the first by whom the new are tried, nor yet the last to lay the old aside."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

55. "All really big discoveries are the results of thought."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

56. "We so often look so long and so regretfully upon the closed door, that we do not see the ones which open for us."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

57. "God has strewn our paths with wonders and we certainly should not go through life with our eyes shut."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

58. "We are all too much inclined, I think, to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all around us and right at our very feet that we have never seen because we have never really looked."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

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

-Alexander Graham Bell.

60. "I may be given credit for having blazed the trail, but when I look at the subsequent developments I feel the credit is due to others rather than to myself."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

Some notable Alexander Graham Bell quotes from his memorable speech addressed to the Telephone Pioneers' Association:

61. "The period that marks the incipiency of the telephone extends from the year 1874 to 1877. It was in 1877 that the telephone really began its commercial career."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

62. "Boston is par excellence the home of the telephone, for it was here that all the apparatus was made and where the important experiments went on."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

63.  "To tell you the truth, as a practical man, I did not believe it; as a theoretical man, I saw a speaking telephone and that theoretically we had the means of reproducing speech in distant places."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

64. "The results would be considered very unsatisfactory at the present time; yet, encouraged by the results, poor as they were, I went ahead immediately to prepare specifications for a patent."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

65. "In the case of new inventions we are generally led to believe that the public is ready to swallow anything, but that grave scientific men are the most skeptical of all. I found this not to be true in the case of the telephone."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

66. "They came and talked successfully through the telephone; so that Japanese was the first foreign language to be spoken over the telephone."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

67. "On April 4, 1877, was opened the first telephone line, the first line specially built for telephonic purposes. It simply connected the office of Mr. Charles Williams, Jr., in Boston, with his house in Somerville."

-Alexander Graham Bell, 2 November 1911, Boston

Here are s few Alexander Graham Bell quotes in addition to all of the telephone quotes that will show his well-meaning and benevolent side.

68. "I had made up my mind to find that for which I was searching even if it required the remainder of my life."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

69. "After innumerable failures, I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity."

-Alexander Graham Bell.

70. "Neither Mabel nor I care much about going but we realize that our opportunities for travelling with our children grow less every year. Elsie is over twenty years of age and Daisy more than 18. How much longer will we be able to keep them with us?"

-Alexander Graham Bell.

Here at Kidadl, we have carefully curated lots of interesting family-friendly quotes for everyone to enjoy! If you liked our suggestions for 70+ Alexander Graham Bell quotes, then why not take a look at more iconic figures  quotes Aldo Leopold or Alfred Adler quotes?