Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 6
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, 1897Source:
In a recent suit in France involving the same or corresponding patents the highest court, acting on a statement submitted by me, decided against Marconi and recognized fully my priority of invention in all the important features. I have every reason to expect that when the same facts are presented here a similar conclusion will be reached by the Supreme Court.
August 28th, 1914
The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.
July, 1934
The greatest energy of movement will be obtained when synchronism is maintained between the pump impulses and the natural oscillations of the system.
May, 1919
Behold the dark threat
veiled in words of flame
One child in misery
is a nation's shame!
With a different form of wireless instrument devised by me some years ago it was found practicable to locate a body of metallic ore below the ground, and it seems that a submarine could be similarly detected.
April 15th, 1917
When the great truth accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interfereable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections, faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere — on sea, or land, or high in the air — humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick: See the excitement coming!
March 5th, 1904
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:
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
Technical invention is akin to architecture and the experts must in time come to the same conclusions I have reached long ago. Sooner or later my power system will have to be adopted in its entirety and so far as I am concerned it is as good as done.
October 16th, 1927