Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 12
The "big earth," as we call it, contains a certain capacity for electricity; let the electricians of the world find out how to measure that capacity, and then, reasoning solidly from one point to another, find out how to convert the "art and mystery" into the art and mastery of it, for the world's everyday uses.
September 11th, 1895Source:
Though free to think and act, we are held together, like the stars in the firmament, with ties inseparable. These ties cannot be seen, but we can feel them.
June, 1900
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
I do not hesitate to state here for future reference and as a test of the accuracy of my scientific forecast that flying machines and ships propelled by electricity transmitted without wire will have ceased to be a wonder in ten years from now. I would say five were it not that there is such a thing as "inertia of human opinion" resisting revolutionary ideas.
May 19th, 1907
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:
The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.
July, 1934
...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
All that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combated, suppressed - only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs, the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
January 7th, 1905
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
Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
June, 1900