Nikola Tesla Quotes - Page 6
The secondary discharge of this apparatus is so powerful that it was always more or less dangerous for the safety of the laboratory and machinery in the same, and elsewhere, to let it play. A number of times the shop caught fire by sparks passing from some nail, wire or any kind of conductor. When the discharge was playing sparks were seen to fly almost everywhere through the laboratory, from one to another object and it was evident that it was more or less risky to let the sparks from the free terminal pass to the ground, because short waves were produced in the conductors and these were only too apt to rupture the insulation of any apparatus in the circuit or circuits connected with the oscillator or in the neighbourhood of the same.
January 1st, 1900
Am I think over it now it seems to me, that only men absolutely stricken with blindness, insensible to the greatness of nature, can hold that this planet is the only one inhabited by intelligent beings.
January 4th, 1901
...Furthermore, an inducement must be offered to those who are engaged in the industrial exploitation of natural sources of power, as waterfalls, by guaranteeing greater returns on the capital invested than they can secure by local development of the property...
June, 1900
There is something within me that might be illusion as it is often case with young delighted people, but if I would be fortunate to achieve some of my ideals, it would be on the behalf of the whole of humanity. If those hopes would become fulfilled, the most exiting thought would be that it is a deed of a Serb.
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
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
Up to the age of eight years, my character was weak and vacillating. I had neither courage or strength to form a firm resolve. My feelings came in waves and surges and vibrated unceasingly between extremes. My wishes were of consuming force and like the heads of the hydra, they multiplied. I was oppressed by thoughts of pain in life and death and religious fear. I was swayed by superstitious belief and lived in constant dread of the spirit of evil, of ghosts, and ogres and other unholy monsters of the dark. Then, all at once, there came a tremendous change which altered the course of my whole existence.
February, 1919Source:
...for if the potential be sufficiently high and if the terminals of the coils be maintained at the proper altitudes the action described will take place, and a current will be transmitted through the elevated air strata, which will encounter little and possibly even less resistance than if conveyed through a copper wire of a practicable size.
September 2nd, 1897
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
I have been feeding pigeons, thousands of them for years. But there was one, a beautiful bird, pure white with light grey tips on its wings; that one was different. It was a female. I had only to wish and call her and she would come flying to me. I loved that pigeon as a man loves a women, and she loved me. As long as I had her, there was a purpose to my life.
January 1st, 1978