Tesla quotes in his handwriting font

Nikola Tesla Quotes

Profound words from, or about, the world's greatest inventor
Displaying 1 - 10 of 139

...I finally succeeded in reaching electrical movements or rates of delivery of electrical energy not only approximating, but, as shown in many comparative tests and measurements, actually surpassing those of lightning discharges...

May 16th, 1900

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

January 7th, 1905

What Nature does not choose to reveal to us, it is no use trying to force from her by bolts and screws.

April 6th, 1897

There were many days when [I] did not know where my next meal was coming from. But I was never afraid to work, I went where some men were digging a ditch ... [and] said I wanted to work. The boss looked at my good clothes and white hands and laughed to the others ... but he said, "All right. Spit on your hands. Get in the ditch." And I worked harder than anybody. At the end of the day I had $2.

July 12th, 1937

Nikola Tesla was not only a great scientist but also a great patriot; he loved his people and his country as we are building it... We are paying our debt to him for his work for the benefit of mankind and for his love of his country.

March 19th, 1944

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called 'the greatest evil in the world.' The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.

June, 1900

The evolution of electric power from the discovery of Faraday in 1831 to the initial great installation of the Tesla polyphase system in 1896 [at Niagara Falls] is undoubtedly the most tremendous event in all engineering history.

August, 1943

My project was retarded by laws of nature. The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time. But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success.

June, 1919

They (decorations) mean nothing — take them away. The only thing that counts is the good that my work might bring to humanity.

July 11th, 1937

But among all these many departments of research, these many branches of industry, new and old, which are being rapidly expanded, there is one dominating all others in importance—one which is of the greatest significance for the comfort and welfare, not to say for the existence, of mankind, and that is the electrical transmission of power.

March, 1897