Tesla quotes in his handwriting font

Nikola Tesla Quotes

Profound words from, or about, the world's greatest inventor
Displaying 1 - 10 of 140

The "big earth," as we call it, contains a certain capacity for electricity; let the electricians of the world find out how to measure that capacity, and then, reasoning solidly from one point to another, find out how to convert the "art and mystery" into the art and mastery of it, for the world's everyday uses.

September 11th, 1895

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

I expect to live to be able to set a machine in the middle of this room and move it by the energy of no other agency than the medium in motion around us.

May 3rd, 1896

The secondary discharge of this apparatus is so powerful that it was always more or less dangerous for the safety of the laboratory and machinery in the same, and elsewhere, to let it play. A number of times the shop caught fire by sparks passing from some nail, wire or any kind of conductor. When the discharge was playing sparks were seen to fly almost everywhere through the laboratory, from one to another object and it was evident that it was more or less risky to let the sparks from the free terminal pass to the ground, because short waves were produced in the conductors and these were only too apt to rupture the insulation of any apparatus in the circuit or circuits connected with the oscillator or in the neighbourhood of the same.

January 1st, 1900

But among all these many departments of research, these many branches of industry, new and old, which are being rapidly expanded, there is one dominating all others in importance—one which is of the greatest significance for the comfort and welfare, not to say for the existence, of mankind, and that is the electrical transmission of power.

March, 1897

I have hundreds of inventions which I could not take the patents of, on account of my misfortune.


Behold the dark threat
veiled in words of flame
One child in misery
is a nation's shame!


I am convinced that I today can send a message to a ship at sea and that those on board can understand it. If I cannot I am willing to lay my head on the guillotine.

March 1st, 1893

I do not believe in laziness, and I should like to see the loafer wiped from the face or the earth; but I want that those who are willing to work should accomplish their results with the least labor and in the best way.

December 18th, 1904

The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.

April 8th, 1934