Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 12
The last 29 days of the month are the hardest.
Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.
May 23rd, 1909Source:
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
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
I have hundreds of inventions which I could not take the patents of, on account of my misfortune.
I would do everything in my power for the benefit of our country and its laws, but I could never condemn a fellow being to death.
October 29th, 1902Source:
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 future will show whether my foresight is as accurate now as it has proved heretofore.
February, 1919Source:
The practical success of an idea, irrespective of its inherent merit, is dependent on the attitude of the contemporaries. If timely it is quickly adopted; if not, it is apt to fare like a sprout lured out of the ground by warm sunshine, only to be injured and retarded in its growth by the succeeding frost.
January 16th, 1910
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