Tesla quotes in his handwriting font

Nikola Tesla Quotes

Profound words from, or about, the world's greatest inventor
Displaying 1 - 10 of 128

That is the trouble with many inventors; they lack patience. They lack the willingness to work a thing out slowly and clearly and sharply in their mind, so that they can actually 'feel it work.' They want to try their first idea right off; and the result is they use up lots of money and lots of good material, only to find eventually that they are working in the wrong direction. We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.

March 31st, 1895

But I hope that it will also be demonstrated soon that in my experiments in the West I was not merely beholding a vision, but had caught sight of a great and profound truth.

February 9th, 1901

It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering — only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world.

January 7th, 1905

It is quite evident, though, that this squandering cannot go on indefinitely, for geological investigations prove our fuel stores to be limited. So great has been the drain on them of late years that the specter of exhaustion is looming up threateningly in the distance...

December, 1931

They (decorations) mean nothing — take them away. The only thing that counts is the good that my work might bring to humanity.

July 11th, 1937

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called 'the greatest evil in the world.' The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

June, 1900

If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.


The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead.

July 23rd, 1934
Source:

The greatest energy of movement will be obtained when synchronism is maintained between the pump impulses and the natural oscillations of the system.

May, 1919

There were many days when [I] did not know where my next meal was coming from. But I was never afraid to work, I went where some men were digging a ditch ... [and] said I wanted to work. The boss looked at my good clothes and white hands and laughed to the others ... but he said, “All right. Spit on your hands. Get in the ditch.” And I worked harder than anybody. At the end of the day I had $2.

July 12th, 1937