Alexander Graham Bell was a famous Scottish-American inventor, scientist and teacher of the deaf best known for inventing the telephone in 1876 and refining the phonograph in 1886.
Born in Scotland in 1847 he moved to London with his family in 1865 and later immigrated to Canada in 1870 before settling in Boston USA where he taught at several schools for the deaf.
Bell fell in love with and married one of his students Mabel Hubbard in 1877 and they had four children.
In addition to his work with the telephone and phonograph Bell also made big contributions to the development of the photophone an early version of the metal detector and heavier-than-air flight.
Bell died in 1922 in Nova Scotia, Canada where he had established a summer home.
I have gathered the best quotes by Alexander Graham Bell.
Best Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
The most successful men in the end are those whose success is the result of steady accretion. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
The telephone will be used to inform people that a telegram has been sent. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
A man’s own judgment should be the final appeal in all that relates to himself. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
The nation that secures control of the air will ultimately control the world. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
With every door that closes a new one opens. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
America is a country of inventors, and the greatest of inventors are the newspaper men. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
One day there will be a telephone in every major city in the USA. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
There are two critical points in every aerial flight-its beginning and its end. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
The only difference between success and failure is the ability to take action. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
If a man is not bound down, he is sure to succeed. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Educate the masses, elevate their standard of intelligence, and you will certainly have a successful nation. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
What this power is, I cannot say… All I know is that it exists. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
We are all too much inclined, I think, to walk through life with our eyes shut. There are things all round us and right at our very feet that we have never seen, because we have never really looked. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Great discoveries and improvements invariably involve the cooperation of many minds. 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.
Famous Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
Before anything else, preparation is the key to success. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
I have always considered myself as an Agnostic… ~ 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.
Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone and following one after the other like a flock of sheep. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
Neither the Army nor the Navy is of any protection, or very little protection, against aerial raids. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Washington is no place in which to carry out inventions. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
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.
Top Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
It is the man who carefully advances step by step…who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Observe, Remember, Compare. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 that he can help thinking or breathing. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
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.
Man is an animal which, alone among the animals, refuses to be satisfied by the fulfillment of animal desires. ~ 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 – and 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.
Popular Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
Perseverance must have some practical end, or it does not avail the man possessing it. A person without a practical end in view becomes a crank or an idiot. Such persons fill our asylums. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
I do not recognize the right of the public to break in the front door of a man’s private life in order to satisfy the gaze of the curious… I do not think it right to dissect living men even for the advancement of science. So far as I am concerned, I prefer a post mortem examination to vivisection without anesthetics. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You’ll be certain to find something you have never seen before. ~ 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. Should this be so, conversation viva voce by telegraph will be a fait accompli. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
Don’t keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
From my earliest childhood, my attention was specially directed to the subject of acoustics, and specially 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.
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.
Concentrate all your thoughts on the task at hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
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.
Inspiring Alexander Graham Bell Quotes
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.
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.
God has strewn our paths with wonders and we certainly should not go through life with our eyes shut. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
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.
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.
When one door closes another door opens; but 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.
Be not the first by whom the new are tried, Nor yet the last to lay the old aside. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
I have travelled 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.
After innumerable failures, I finally uncovered the principle for which I was searching, and I was astounded at its simplicity. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
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.
Sometimes we stare so long at a door that is closing that we see too late the one that is open. ~ 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.
The great advantage [the telephone] possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus consists in the fact that it requires no skill to operate the instrument. ~ Alexander Graham Bell.
So these were the 73 top Alexander Graham Bell quotes and sayings.
If you like these quotes and sayings, then you can also read my other posts on Hazrat Abu Bakr quotes and Al-Ghazali quotes.
