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When I think about my own work, there usually is one or the other light bulb moment where there is this flash of insight. Where do these ideas come from? Supernatural? Enigmatic? Divine? You can take that any way you like. I think the human mind does a lot of things that we could call somehow divine.
Sep 17, 2025
With acting, it's all about internalizing the character for me and doing all the preparation you can. So the day you first step into your wardrobe, you can walk like the person. That's really the moment where the light bulb goes off. You're nervous; any actor will tell you that. Robert De Niro will probably tell you the same thing. He may not want to share that with you, but he probably goes through it. That's why actors are so neurotic.
He spent more time on the road to Damascus than a Syrian camel driver. And we thought nobody could fill John Kerry's flip-flops! ... [Romney's record was] anything but conservative until he changed all the light bulbs in his chandelier in time to run for President.
It's a failure only if you don't get anything out of it, Thomas Edison said he knew 999 ways that a light bulb did not work; yet we have lights today.
[S]uppose you make a hole in an ordinary evacuated electric light bulb and allow the air molecules to pass in at the rate of 1,000,000 a second, the bulb will become full of air in approximately 100,000,000 years.
Religion is a light bulb, created by man to help him to see in the dark.
Sometimes I feel like tap-dancing, screeching, unscrewing light bulbs, pulling curtains, combing hair, doing knee bends, handstands and turning somersaults out there.
Particles of raw inspiration sleet through the universe all the time. Every once in a while one of them hits a receptive mind, which then invents DNA or the flute sonata form or a way of making light bulbs wear out in half the time. But most of them miss. Most people go through their lives without being hit by even one.
Give yourself five minutes to consider how you can turn a miserable situation to your benefit and that light bulb is going to click on.
It's like someone jammed an electric light bulb in your face, and busted it. I thought half my head was blowed off...When he knocked me down I could have stayed there for three weeks.
You think maybe if you just work harder and faster, you can hold off the chaos, but then one day you’re changing a patio light bulb with a five-year life span and you realize how you’ll only be changing this light maybe ten more times before you’ll be dead.
[Locating, from scratch, the gene related to a disease is like] trying to find a burned-out light bulb in a house located somewhere between the East and West coasts without knowing the state, much less the town or street the house is on.
I'm glad . . . that Edison didn't give up on the light bulb. That Luther refused to back down. That Michelangelo kept painting. That Lindbergh kept flying.
How many amoebas does it take to screw in a light bulb? One, no two! No four! ...no eight!
As far as where I go when I die, the concept that I am simple going to flick out, like a light bulb, to me is not only spiritually impossible to believe, but logically it is laughable - the idea that we simply die and nothing happens.
The light bulb going off in my head was a fear that in this pivotal moment in history, when America faces so many serious problems, when the middle class and working class of this country are being decimated, that there were not voices out there representing the tens of millions of people who needed a voice. And the idea of going through a campaign where there is not a serious discussion about the most important issues facing America, where there are not voices out there representing people who are hurting - that seemed to me unacceptable.
Playing guitar as a young teen, I didn't really have the little light bulb in my head that said you're committed until when I was about 16. By the time I was 16, I was like, I'm guna do this. I don't care what happens. I'd play whatever other instruments fell into my hands along way.
All of us can make changes, but the changes that are most needed are not light bulbs and windows but laws and policies and treaties. So, yes, we are in a phase of this (climate protection) struggle where civic and political action is at the top of the list.
What did moths bump into before the electric light bulb was invented? Boy, the lightbulb really screwed the moth up didn't it? Are there moths on their way to the sun now going, It's gonna be worth it!.
Of the 200 light bulbs that didn't work, every failure told me something that I was able to incorporate into the next attempt.
I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.
Do you know how much money you would save if you changed your light bulb to compact florescent light bubs? How much would you save if you decreased your temperature of your house in the winter by one degree, or increase it by one degree? We just don't know these numbers, but I think displays could make it a memorable change in terms of attention, and also help us translate it in terms of concrete ways on what you can get.
Often when I'm on TV, they'll ask what are the three most important things for people to do. I know they want me to say that people should change their light bulbs. I say the number one thing is to organize politically; number two, do some political organizing; number three, get together with your neighbors and organize; and then if you have energy left over from all of that, change the light bulb.
You can think of individuals as different light bulbs. There will be a differences in wattage and in color. There will be differences in shape, but everywhere the current is the same. That current is who you are. You are not the individual bulb. You are the one current in all.
I know of over 3,000 ways [that] a light bulb does not work.
I remember my mother and father arguing about light bulbs because my father thought he could save money by putting 25-watt bulbs instead of 60-watt bulbs and my mother was trying to explain to him that her children needed to learn to read so that they could go to college. He couldn't see that.
Sometimes it's more important to change politicians than light bulbs.
Fall forward. Here's what I mean: Reggie Jackson struck out 2,600 times in his career - the most in the history of baseball. But you don't hear about the strikeouts. People remember the home runs. Fall forward. Thomas Edison conducted 1,000 failed experiments. Did you know that? I didn't either - because number 1,001 was the light bulb. Fall forward. Every failed experiment is one step closer to success.
I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel. And it isn't vague, it strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own.
I come from Montana, and in eastern Montana we have a lot of dirt between light bulbs. It is expensive trying to bring the new technologies to smaller schools to upgrade their technologies to take advantage of distance learning.
One time Robert Plant was set to check into the same room after I checked out, so I removed every light bulb and ordered up a bunch of stinky cheese and put it under the mattress.
I'm one of those people that think Thomas Edison and the light bulb changed the world more than Karl Marx ever did.
When my mood was high, I seemed normal, even buoyant. I felt smarter. I had secrets. I could see God in a light bulb
We forget just how painfully dim the world was before electricity. A candle, a good candle, provides barely a hundredth of the illumination of a single 100 watt light bulb.
The government has no business telling an individual what kind of light bulb to buy.
Limit or eliminate late-night computer and television viewing. A computer or TV screen may seem much dimmer than a light bulb, but these screens often fill your field of vision, mimicking the effects of a room filled with light.
The space shuttle was often used as an example of why you shouldn't even attempt to make something reusable. But one failed experiment does not invalidate the greater goal. If that was the case, we'd never have had the light bulb.
Keep a good head and always carry a light bulb.
I didn't fail 1000 times. The light bulb was an invention with 1000 steps.
We not only grew up on Be-Bop; Be-Bop raised us. For my generation, Be-Bop came on like a light bulb going flash behind the eyes.For us, it was not only an intellectual movement, but a way of life. We walked, dressed, and rapped Be-Bop.
Going blonde is like buying yourself a light bulb!
You know, I used to warm the thermometer on the light bulb... I was really good at being sick. I could forge my mother's signature on a sick note so well I was hardly ever at school.
History was a trash bag of random coincidences torn open in a wind. Surely, Watt with his steam engine, Faraday with his electric motor, and Edison with his incandescent light bulb did not have it as their goal to contribute to a fuel shortage some day that would place their countries at the mercy of Arab oil.
I'm pretty much your average, energy-saving-light-bulbs-recycling citizen.
My aunt used to call me light bulb head because my head is small at the bottom and bigger at the top. But it was a term of endearment.
The newer education put stress on culture ... Saturday mornings, the young were brushed and washed, forced into blue cheviot suits, and dragged to children's concerts to learn appreciation. They wriggled, squirmed, counted the light bulbs in the ceiling, dived under seats to gather ticket stubs, stampeded out at intermissions. The weakness of their bladders was astounding.
Franny has the measles, for one thing. Incidentally, did you hear her last week? She went on at beautiful length about how she used to fly all around the apartment when she was four and no one was home. The new announcer is worse than Grant - if possible, even worse than Sullivan in the old days. He said she surely dreamt that she was able to fly. The baby stood her ground like an angel. She said she knew she was able to fly because when she came down she always had dust on her fingers from touching the light bulbs.
We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. "L.B.J." should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.
Now, if you're Al Gore, you can afford $10 a pop for squiggly-pig-tailed fluorescent light bulbs. But if you're mainstream America, two or three kids, mom and dad working outside the home, that's not a very good deal.
The extent of his influence across jazz, across American music, and around the world has such continuing stature that he is one of the few who can easily be mentioned with Stravinsky, Picasso and Joyce. His life was the embodiment of one who moves from rags to riches, from anonymity to internationally imitated innovator. Louis Daniel Armstrong supplied revolutionary language that took on such pervasiveness that it became commonplace, like the light bulb, the airplane, the telephone.