"Finally they said, 'Three years we have been hearing about it; nine hundred experiments have been made – all have failed. But you seem to be absolutely unaffected by the failures.'

"Edison said, 'No, I am not unaffected. I am immensely inspired. If nine hundred attempts have failed, it means now we are coming closer and closer every day to that attempt which is going to succeed. How long can it elude us? It is a challenge.'

"Do you see his point? He is saying nine hundred doors are closed. We have inquired: they are wrong doors, they lead nowhere. Now the number of doors is reduced. There are nine hundred doors less. We are succeeding; we are coming closer and closer to the door that will lead to the successful experiment.

"Slowly, slowly his colleagues deserted him, his friends left him. But he continued, and one day he succeeded. It was late at night; it must have been three o'clock in the morning…the first light bulb! And he was so enchanted by it that he simply went on sitting under the light, looking at it.

"For five years he had been working…And his wife shouted from the bedroom, 'Are you mad or something? Put off that light and come to bed.'

"And he said to her, 'You don't know what you are talking about. To put on this light I have wasted five years, lost all my friends and colleagues, and you are telling me to put it off. Just come and see the miracle.'

"I am a utopian.

"I am very optimistic.

"I trust in the inspirations, in the hopes of man. We have just been doing something wrong to materialize them. The basic thing that I want to point out to you is that we have always been thinking of changing the society. The communists, the fascists, the socialists, the fabians, the anarchists, all kinds of utopians have one single thing in common, which is the cause of their failure. They all have tried to change the society.

"The society does not exist anywhere.

"What exists is the individual.

"Society is only a name. Have you ever come across society? Have you ever met society and said hello…shaken hands with society? Whenever you come across anybody it is the individual."