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It is the man who carefully advances step by step, with his mind becoming wider and wider … who is bound to succeed in the greatest degree.

Alexander Graham Bell, who was granted the telephone patent on this day in 1876, on innovation, creativity, and success.

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March 7 1876: Alexander Graham Bell’s original patent drawing and oath, marking the birth of the telephone as an official technology. More on Bell’s views on innovation and success here.

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I begin my work at about nine or ten o’clock in the evening, and continue until four or five in the morning. Night is a more quiet time to work. It aids thought.

Alexander Graham Bell, who was evidently a late chronotype, on creativity, innovation, and success.

Pair with the daily routines of famous creators.

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In witness whereof—hear my voice, Alexander Graham Bell.

Groundbreaking digital technology has allowed researchers to recover Alexander Graham Bell’s voice from a recording held at the Smithsonian. Complement with Bell on creativity, innovation, and the secret of success.

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In Paris, they fatten geese to create a diseased condition of the liver. A man stands with a box of very finely prepared and very rich food beside a revolving stand, and, as it revolves, one goose after another passes before him. Taking the first goose by the neck, he clamps down its throat a large lump of the food, whether the goose will or no, until its crop is well stuffed out, and then he proceeds with the rest in the same very mechanical manner. Now, I think, if those geese had to work hard for their own food, they would digest it better, and be far healthier geese. How many young American geese are stuffed in about the same manner at college and at home, by their rich and fond parents!

Alexander Graham Bell on how top-down instruction and the industrial model of education stifle innovation and do to young minds what foie gras farms do to geese.

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Alexander Graham Bell on innovation, creativity, and success

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Alexander Graham Bell’s original telephone patent drawing and oath, March 7, 1876.

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Alexander Graham Bell on success

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Radiolab points to this priceless photo of Alexander Graham Bell kissing his wife inside a tetrahedreal kite – a move most certainly not listed in the era’s guide to kissing. If this isn’t love, what is?

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It is ridiculous to expect that a [child] shall talk or write good English, unless good English has been PREVIOUSLY presented to the child in spoken or written form — and in sufficient quantity to impress Good English expressions upon his mind.

Alexander Graham Bell on language and education

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Our most original compositions are composed exclusively of expressions derived from others.

Alexander Graham Bell on originality, plagiarism, language, and education – a 1903 letter to Annie Sullivan, Helen Keller’s teacher.