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To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk.

In plain words

Inventing takes imagination and a heap of spare parts.

Where these words come from

How sure this is
45% sureLots of sources credit Thomas Edison with this, and they agree with each other. The book or the speech it first came from hasn't turned up yet.
What turned up
Wikiquote-sourced only to a 1998 secondary robotics textbook (Behavior-Based Robotics by Ronald C. Arkin, p. 8); no primary interview or work located, held at likely.
Sources checked
  • en.wikiquote.orgChecked using claude-sonnet-5, 21 August 2026Wikiquote Sourced section (Date unknown), citing Behavior-Based Robotics (1998), p. 8.

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