Nikola Tesla Quotes
It would be impossible to describe the many wonderful things that the inventor (Nikola Tesla) showed Mr. Rouss and the reporter. Electricity no longer seemed a new force, but a living thing, capable of putting life and motion into even inanimate objects.
April 3rd, 1896Source:
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
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 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
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, 1901Source:
...With these developments we have every reason to anticipate that in a time not very distant most telegraphic messages across the oceans will be transmitted without cables. For short distances we need a 'wireless' telephone, which requires no expert operators...
June, 1900
... 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 hope this is the invention that will make war impossible.
May 20th, 1916Source:
How extraordinary was my life an incident may illustrate... [As a youth] I was fascinated by a description of Niagara Falls I had perused, and pictured in my imagination a big wheel run by the Falls. I told my uncle that I would go to America and carry out this scheme. Thirty years later I saw my ideas carried out at Niagara and marveled at the unfathomable mystery of the mind.
March, 1919
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: