Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 3
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
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
Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.
February 9th, 1935Source:
A single ray of light from a distant star falling upon the eye of a tyrant in bygone times, may have altered the course of his life, may have changed the destiny of nations, may have transformed the surface of the globe, so intricate, so inconceivably complex are the processes of nature.
February 24th, 1893
Now, I must tell you of a strange experience which bore fruit in my later life... ...We had a cold [snap] drier than even observed before. People walking in the snow left a luminous trail. [As I stroked] Mačak's back, [it became] a sheet of light and my hand produced a shower of sparks. My father remarked, this is nothing but electricity, the same thing you see on the trees in a storm. My mother seemed alarmed. Stop playing with the cat, she said, he might start a fire. I was thinking abstractly. Is nature a cat? If so, who strokes its back? It can only be God, I concluded. I can not exaggerate the effect of this marvelous sight on my childish imagination. Day after day I asked myself what is electricity and found no answer. Eighty years have gone by since and I still ask the same question, unable to answer it.
1939Source:
One cannot help looking at that little bulb of Crookes with a feeling akin to awe, when he considers all that it has done for scientific progress - first, the magnificent wonderful achievements of Roentgen. Possibly, it may still contain a grateful Asmodeus, who will be let out of his narrow prison cell by a lucky student. At times it has seemed to me as though I myself heard a whispering voice, and I have searched eagerly among my dusty bulbs and bottles. I fear my imagination has deceived me, but there they are still, my dusty bulbs, and I am still listening hopefully.
March 11th, 1896Source:
The day when we shall know exactly what "electricity" is, will chronicle an event probably greater, more important than any other recorded in the history of the human race. The time will come when the comfort, the very existence, perhaps, of man will depend upon that wonderful agent.
February 24th, 1893
What Nature does not choose to reveal to us, it is no use trying to force from her by bolts and screws.
April 6th, 1897Source:
...the papers, which thirty years ago conferred upon me the honor of American citizenship, are always kept in a safe, while my orders, diplomas, degrees, gold medals and other distinctions are packed away in old trunks.
June, 1919