Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 4
Like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed. I drew with a stick on the sand the diagrams of my motor. A thousand secrets of nature which I might have stumbled upon accidentally I would have given for that one which I had wrestled from her against all odds and at the peril of my existence.
March, 1919
...these scientific developments may even affect our morals and customs. Perhaps we shall shortly get so used to this state of things that nobody will feel the slightest embarrassment while he is conscious that his skeleton and other particulars are being scrutinized by indelicate observers.
April 8th, 1896Source:
More than 35 years ago, I undertook the production of these phenomena (of lightning) and, in 1899 I actually succeeded, using a generator of 2,000 horsepower, in obtaining discharges of 18,000,000 volts carrying currents of 1,200 amperes, which were of such power as to be audible at a distance of 13 miles. I also learned how to produce such lightnings as occur in Nature, and mastered all the technical difficulties in this connection. But I found that even in the small and comparatively negligible trigger work called for the employment of thousands of horsepower; and this is the great obstacle now in the way of this supreme accomplishment.
December, 1933Source:
I have studied cosmic rays to learn that the theory of relativity has been what I long considered it — "a beggar dressed in purple which the ignorant mistake for a king."
July 11th, 1935
I come from a very wiry and long-lived race. Some of my ancestors have been centenarians, and one of them lived 129 years. I am determined to keep up the record and please myself with prospects of great promise. Then again, nature has given me a vivid imagination...
May 26th, 1917
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, 1890
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
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
January 7th, 1905
Suffice it to say that, were we to seize and to eliminate from our industrial world the results of Mr. Tesla's work, the wheels of industry would cease to turn, our electric cars and trains would stop, our towns would be dark, our mills would be dead and idle. Yea, so far reaching is this work, that it has become the warp and woof of industry... His name marks an epoch in the advance of electrical science. From that work has sprung a revolution in the electrical art.
May 26th, 1917
...I finally succeeded in reaching electrical movements or rates of delivery of electrical energy not only approximating, but, as shown in many comparative tests and measurements, actually surpassing those of lightning discharges...
May 16th, 1900