Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 3
There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine. Nothing enters our minds or determines our actions which is not directly or indirectly a response to stimuli beating upon our sense organs from without.
February 9th, 1935Source:
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:
...I have fame and untold wealth, more than this, and yet - how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccessful man, and how many poor, struggling writers have called me a visionary. Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world!
May 18th, 1917
There can be no energy in gross matter except that which had been, or is being, received from without.
August 18th, 1935
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, 1919Source:
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
J.P. Morgan towered above all the Wall Street people like Samson over the Philistines.
December, 1931Source:
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
If this does not appeal to you sufficiently to recognize in me a discoverer of principles, do me, at least, the justice of calling me an "inventor of some beautiful pieces of electrical apparatus.
June 23rd, 1907Source:
Everyone should consider his body as a priceless gift from one whom he loves above all, a marvelous work of art, of indescribable beauty, and mystery beyond human conception, and so delicate that a word, a breath, a look, nay, a thought may injure it.
June, 1900