Tesla quotes in his handwriting font

Nikola Tesla Quotes

Profound words from, or about, the world's greatest inventor
Displaying 1 - 10 of 120

I have never failed in any of my experiments and therefore I have good reason to believe that this one will not prove worthless...

April 4th, 1901

Th[e] problem was rendered extremely difficult, owing to the immense dimensions of the planet... But by gradual and continuous improvements of a generator of electrical oscillations... I finally succeeded in reaching rates of delivery of electrical energy actually surpassing those of lightning discharges... By use of such a generator of stationary waves and receiving apparatus properly placed and adjusted in any other locality, however remote, it is practicable to transmit intelligible signals, or to control or actuate at will any one apparatus for many other important and valuable purposes.

May 16th, 1900

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

Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.

June, 1900

My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.

February, 1919

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


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

January 7th, 1905

If I were ever assailed by doubt of ultimate success I would dismiss it by remembering the words of that great philosopher, Lord Kelvin, who after witnessing some of my experiments said to me with tears in his eyes: 'I am sure you will do it.'

October 16th, 1927

Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.

January 7th, 1905

Hardly is there a nation which has met with a sadder fate than the Serbians. From the height of its splendor, when the empire embraced almost the entire northern part of the Balkan peninsula and a large portion of what is now Austria, the Serbian nation was plunged into abject slavery, after the fateful battle of 1389 at the Kosovo Polje, against the overwhelming Asian hordes. Europe can never repay the great debt it owes to the Serbians for checking, by the sacrifice of its own liberty, that barbarian influx.

December 31st, 1897