Quote: Genius is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration (Edison 1901 May 6) (Plus earlier variants)

Thu Apr 19 06:40:19 UTC 2012

Without disturbing the Edison lore, there are several other paths of
precursors to consider--in addition to Sanborn.

In particular, there is a string of mentions of combination of
inspiration and perspiration leading to some sort of success (not
necessarily intellectual or "genius").

http://goo.gl/ZKAJ2
The Friend. Volume 50(9). October 7, 1876
p. 70/1
> /Inspiration or Perspiration./--No man now standing on an eminence of
> influence and power, and doing great work, has arrived at his position
> by going up in an elevator. He took the stairway step by step. He
> climbed the rocks often witb bleeding hands. He prepared himself by
> the work of climbing for the work he is doing. He never accomplished
> an inch of his elevation by standing at the foot of the stairway with
> his mouth open and longing. There is no "royul road" to anything
> good--not even to wealth. Money that has not been paid for in life is
> not wealth. It goes as it comes. There is no element of permanence in
> it. The man who reaches his money in an elevator does not know bow to
> enjoy it; so it is not wealth to him. To get a high position without
> climbing to it, to win wealth without earning it, to do fine work
> without the discipline necessary to its performance, to be famous, or
> useful, or ornamental, without preliminary cost, seems to be the
> universal desire of the young. The children would begin where their
> fathers leave off. What exactly is the secret of true success in life?
> It is to do without flinching, and with entire faithfulness, the duty
> that stands next to one. When a man has mastered the duties around him
> he is ready for those of a higher grade, and he takes naturally one
> step upward. When he has mastered the duties of the new grade, he goes
> on climbing. There are no surprises to the man who arrives at an
> eminence legitimately. It is entirely natural that he should be there,
> and he is as much at home there, and as little elated, as when he was
> working patiently at the foot of the stairs. There are heights above
> him, and he remains humble and simple.--Preachments are of little
> avail, perhaps; but when one comes into contact with so many men and
> women who put aspiration instead of perspiration, and yearning instead
> of earning, and longing for labor, he is tempted to say to them: "Stop
> looking up, and look around you! Do the work that first comes to your
> hand and do it well. Take no upward step until you come to it
> naturally, and you have the power to hold it. The top in this little
> world is not so high, and patient climbing will bring yon to it ere
> you are aware.-- /Lucknow Witness./

http://goo.gl/3OYsO
The history and records of the Elephant Club. By Edward Fitch Underhill
and Mortimer Thomson. 1856
The Colored Camp-Meeting. p. 138
> The grass might have been agreeable to look upon at a distance, but a
> close inspection showed it to be full of pismires; the stumps would
> have beeu commodious seats, if they had not been most of them
> previously appropriated by black-snakes; the sleeping places would
> have been tents, if they had not been huts, and a poetical fancy might
> have pictured them as being constructed of canvas, white as the driven
> snow, but the practical mind instantly discovered that they were made
> of oak slabs and dirty horse-blankets. Some imaginative people would
> have set down the speaking of the ministers as eloquence if not
> inspiration, but a critical individual would have found fault with the
> bad grammar, and insinuated that the inspiration was all perspiration.

Bonus--the pseudonyms of the authors are Knight Russ Ockside, M.D., and
Q[ueer]. K[ritter]. Philander Doesticks, P[erfect]. B[rick]., who are
Edward Fitch Underhill and Mortimer Thomson, respectively.

http://goo.gl/Tvg7A
Putnam Monthly. April 1855
American Orators. Rufus Choate. p. 357/1
> The client who retains this great advocate, may always be assured that
> he gets the whole of him ; blood, brains, everything -- his
> inspiration and his perspiration -- all are fully given to /him/.

There is also the opposite--favoring /inspiration/--which may well go
back at least another 100 years, into the mid-1700s. This is one of
those that were closer in time to Edison's quip.

http://goo.gl/wYDhg
Lippincott's Monthly Magazine. Volume 27. June 1881
p. 604/2
> Reformers, again, are very apt to overlook the witty reminder of the
> old preacher to the younger one of the necessity of discriminating
> bet\veen inspiration and perspiration: in other words, great zeal in
> prosecution is not a satisfactory guaranty of excellence of object. He
> might have gone further. Men are beginning to believe that great
> intensity of feeling indicates a lack of mental breadth; and, although
> we should not like to diminish any genuine earnestness of purpose in
> our excellent NewEngland reformers, we must add the truism they so
> often appear to forget, that sincerity of conviction and earnestness
> of purpose are as consistent with erroneous thinking and measures as
> with correct judgments and acts. The Mohammedans who fought the
> Crusaders were as sincere and earnest as their Christian foes.

There a few of such expressions sprinkled throughout evangelical
magazines over the 100 or so years preceding this Lippincott's piece.
The retort may well have been a familiar one from sermons. But the
sentiment is the exact opposite--when it comes to preaching,
perspiration is no indication of inspiration!

It is possible that Edison, at some point early in his life, had been
exposed to this kind of preaching. More precisely, he's been told that
inspiration comes from within. The quip published in LHJ may well have
been a reaction to this--unlike religion, when it comes to inventions,
inspiration /does/ come from perspiration. But, obviously, this is just
speculation. Certainly there have been other precursors that made a
similar point of necessity of perspiration in achieving success--and
boosting inspiration.

     VS-)

On 4/18/2012 6:03 PM, Garson O'Toole wrote:
> One of Thomas Edison's most famous pronouncements was: Genius is 1 per
> cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration. The Yale Book of
> Quotations and the Quote Verifier have valuable entries on this topic.
> The remark evolved over time and the earliest versions gave a split of
> 98 to 2 instead of 99 to 1. The main contribution of this post is a
> May 6, 1901 citation that matches the most common modern variant, and
> a May 21, 1898 statement that divides genius using the following
> wording: "inspiration is 2 per cent and perspiration 98."
>
> Cite: 1901 May 6, Idaho Daily Statesman [Idaho Statesman], Doing One's
> Best, Page 4, Column 3, Boise, Idaho. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Genius is another name for hard work, honest work. "Genius," says
> Edison "is 1 per cent inspiration and 99 per cent perspiration."
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
>
> The rhetorical linkage between genius, inspiration, and perspiration
> pre-dates the famous commentary by Edison. Below is an example in 1892
> of a comment made in response to a national lecturer named Kate
> Sanborn.
>
> Wikipedia has an entry for Sanborn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kate_Sanborn
>
> Cite: 1892 December 4, Springfield Sunday Republican [Springfield
> Republican], Men Women and Affairs, Page 4, Column 4, Springfield,
> Massachusetts. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Kate Sanborn is getting lots of credit for having said that "talent is
> perspiration." That idea has been expressed very often; in fact, much
> in the same terms. A common way of saying it is that "genius is
> perspiration more than inspiration."
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here is another cite discussing the remarks of Sanborn. Her point
> differed from Edison's later point but the vocabulary overlapped.
>
> Cite: 1893 January 14, The Spectator, Woman's Domain: Notes, Page 9,
> Column 3, Rockford, Illinois. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Miss Kate Sanborn pithily observes that "Genius is inspiration, talent
> is perspiration." meaning by this epigram that genius acts naturally
> and without conscious effort, while that which is only talent has to
> toil and struggle and perspire.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Sanborn also delivered a lecture in California that was reported in a
> Riverside, California newspaper. The quotation from this lecture has a
> different flavor.
>
> Cite: 1893 April 21, Riverside Daily Press, Miss Sanborn's Lecture,
> Page 4, Column 1, Riverside, California. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Her subject was "What is Genius?" She quoted copiously from ancient
> and modern writers, giving their definitions of the word genius, and
> wittily added that "genius is inspiration, talent and perspiration."
> [End excerpt]
>
> Here is a key citation for Edison that is mentioned in The Quote
> Verifier. This quote uses the phrase "hard work" instead of
> "perspiration". Also, Edison suggests a 98 to 2 split.
>
> Cite: 1898 April, The Ladies' Home Journal, The Anecdotal Side of
> Edison, Subsection: His Estimate of Genius, Start Page 7, Quote Page
> 8, Column 2, Curtis Publishing Company, Philadelphia. (ProQuest
> American Periodicals)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Once, when asked to give his definition of genius, Mr. Edison replied:
> "Two per cent is genius and ninety-eight per cent is hard work." At
> another time, when the argument that genius was inspiration was
> brought before him, he said: "Bah! Genius is not inspired. Inspiration
> is perspiration."
> [End excerpt]
>
> This citation in 1898 moves closer to the modern version of the
> statement by using "perspiration" instead of "hard work". But the
> split is still 98 to 2.
>
> Cite: 1898 May 21, Savannah Tribune, Peace Has Its Victories: An
> Interesting Address to High School Boys Delivered by Mr. J. K. Orr,
> Page 4, Column 2, Savannah, Georgia. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Even Mr. Edison is quoted as having said that genius may be divided
> into two parts, of which inspiration is 2 per cent and perspiration
> 98.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Cite: 1898 June 19, The Helena Independent, Brevities, Page 2, Column
> 2, Helena, Montana. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> Speaking of the life and labors of Thomas A. Edison, a writer says
> that two per cent of his great discoveries and inventions can be
> credited to inspiration, while the other 98 per cent is due to
> perspiration.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Cite: 1900 August 17, Dallas Morning News, Current Comment: Genius
> Gone to Waste, [Acknowledgement to St. Paul Pioneer Press], Page 6,
> Column 7, Dallas, Texas. (GenealogyBank)
> [Begin excerpt]
> If it be true that "genius is one-tenth inspiration and nine-tenths
> perspiration," consider how much genius in these last ten days has
> gone to waste.
> [End excerpt]
>
> By May 6, 1901 the modern version of the quotation credited to Edison
> was published as mentioned at the beginning of this post.
>
> Cite: 1902 December 27, Scientific American, Thomas Alva Edison, Page
> 463, Column 1, Munn&  Co., New York. (ProQuest American Periodicals)
> [Begin excerpt]
> To those who believe that Edison's work is the product of an
> inspiration given by nature to but few, the story of the manner in
> which he achieves success will seem shockingly unromantic. In the
> genius who works by inspiration Edison has no great faith. "Genius is
> two per cent inspiration and ninety-eight per cent perspiration," is
> the Incisive, epigrammatic answer he once gave to a man who thought
> that a genius worked only when the spirit moved him.
> [End excerpt]
>
> Garson

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