Nikola Tesla Quotes
... I do not believe that capital punishment is proper. I do not see how one person can condemn another to death.
October 16th, 1902Source:
I do not hesitate to state here for future reference and as a test of the accuracy of my scientific forecast that flying machines and ships propelled by electricity transmitted without wire will have ceased to be a wonder in ten years from now. I would say five were it not that there is such a thing as “inertia of human opinion” resisting revolutionary ideas.
May 19th, 1907
Had Tesla published the measuring methods he developed in New York and Colorado Springs, his name would probably be frequently encountered in earlier textbooks and handbooks on electrical measurements at high frequencies. As it is, we can only remark his exceptional ingenuity in designing measuring devices and the accuracy with which he determined the resonance of oscillatory circuits. An especially interesting feature is his method using a lamp already heated up by a supplementary power source, greatly increasing its sensitivity to small amplitude changes around the resonance peak of the oscillatory circuit.1978
...I have fame and untold wealth, more than this, and yet - how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccessful man, and how many poor, struggling writers have called me a visionary. Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world!
May 18th, 1917
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
... There is an ideal striving which is the effort of the human mind to free itself from materialistic fetters. But there is no individuality. You wouldn't say a wave on the ocean had individuality. It is a succession of waves. You are not the same person today that you were yesterday. I am just a concatenation of existences which are nearly, but not exactly, alike. It is this concatenation which produces the effect of continuance, like a motion picture. What Tesla gives to posterity is not the product or Tesla, but of a succession of existences.
July 10th, 1932
Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
June, 1900
We build but to tear down. Most of our work and resource is squandered. Our onward march is marked by devastation. Everywhere there is an appalling loss of time, effort and life. A cheerless view, but true.
January 16th, 1910
I am being driven to the conclusion that Tesla was the greatest electrical inventor we have had on our roll of membership; in fact we might go as far as to say that he was the greatest inventor in the realm of electrical engineering.
I was myself a fair scholar. For years I pondered, so to speak, day and night over books, and filled my head with sound views - very sound ones, indeed - those of others. But I could no get to practical results. I then began to work and think independently. Gradually my views became unsound, but they conducted me to some sound results.
November 14th, 1890Source: