Nikola Tesla Quotes

#1. If we want to reduce poverty and misery, if we want to give to every deserving individual what is needed for a safe existence of an intelligent being, we want to provide more machinery, more power. Power is our mainstay, the primary source of our many-sided energies.

Nikola Tesla

#2. Is nature a giant cat? If so, who strokes its back?

Nikola Tesla

#3. We should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.

Nikola Tesla

#4. The entire Earth will be converted into a huge brain

Nikola Tesla

#5. The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.

Nikola Tesla

#6. You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.

Nikola Tesla

#7. There is scarcely a subject that cannot be mathematically treated and the effects calculated or the results determined beforehand from the available theoretical and practical data.

Nikola Tesla

#8. There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.

Nikola Tesla

#9. As I review the events of my past life I realize how subtle are the influences that shape our destinies.

Nikola Tesla

#10. Electrical science has revealed to us the true nature of light, has provided us with innumerable appliances and instruments of precision, and has thereby vastly added to the exactness of our knowledge.

Nikola Tesla

#11. antisocial behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world of conformists.

Nikola Tesla

#12. I am even grateful to Einstein and others because through their erroneous theories they lead mankind away from that dangerous path I followed.

Nikola Tesla

#13. 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.

Nikola Tesla

#14. I come from a very wiry and long-lived race. Some of my ancestors have been centenarians, and one of them lived 129 years. I am determined to keep up the record and please myself with prospects of great promise. Then again, nature has given me a vivid imagination.

Nikola Tesla

#15. I cannot 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.

Nikola Tesla

#16. War can not be avoided until the physical cause for its recurrence is removed and this, in the last analysis, is the vast extent of the planet on which we live.

Nikola Tesla

#17. Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.

Nikola Tesla

#18. Alternate currents, especially of high frequencies, pass with astonishing freedom through even slightly rarefied gases. The upper strata of the air are rarefied. To reach a number of miles out into space requires the overcoming of difficulties of a merely mechanical nature.

Nikola Tesla

#19. What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.

Nikola Tesla

#20. Of the various branches of electrical investigation, perhaps the most interesting and immediately the most promising is that dealing with alternating currents.

Nikola Tesla

#21. We may produce at will, from a sending station. an electrical effect in any particular region of the globe; we may determine the relative position or course of a moving object, such as a vessel at sea, the distance traversed by the same, or its speed.

Nikola Tesla

#22. All matter comes from a primary substance, the luminiferous ether

Nikola Tesla

#23. Of all things, I liked books best.

Nikola Tesla

#24. The day when we shall know exactly what electricity is will chronicle an event probably greater, more important than any other recorded in the history of the human race. The time will come when the comfort, the very existence, perhaps, of man will depend upon that wonderful agent.

Nikola Tesla

#25. My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe there is a core from which we obtain knowledge, strength and inspiration. I have not penetrated into the secrets of this core, but I know that it exists.

Nikola Tesla

#26. 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 have really worked, is mine

Nikola Tesla

#27. The motors I build there were exactly as I imagined them. I made no attempt to improve the design, but merely reproduced the pictures as they appeared to my vision and the operation was always as I expected.

Nikola Tesla

#28. It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.

Nikola Tesla

#29. Most persons are so absorbed in the contemplation of the outside world that they are wholly oblivious to what is passing on within themselves.

Nikola Tesla

#30. No rocket will reach the moon save by a miraculous discovery of an explosive far more energetic than any known. And even if the requisite fuel were produced, it would still have to be shown that the rocket machine would operate at 459 degrees below zero-the temperature of interplanetary space.

Nikola Tesla

#31. The harness of waterfalls is the most economical method known for drawing energy from the sun.

Nikola Tesla

#32. The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War.

Nikola Tesla

#33. The trend of opinion among eugenists is that we must make marriage more difficult. Certainly no one who is not a desirable parent should be permitted to produce progeny.

Nikola Tesla

#34. An inexpensive instrument, not bigger than a watch, will enable its bearer to hear anywhere, on sea or land, music or song, the speech of a political leader, the address of an eminent man of science, or the sermon of an eloquent clergyman, delivered in some other place, however distant.

Nikola Tesla

#35. I have already demonstrated, by crucial tests, the practicability of signaling by my system from one to any other point of the globe, no matter how remote, and I shall soon convert the disbelievers.

Nikola Tesla

#36. Archimedes was my ideal. I admired the works of artists, but to my mind, they were only shadows and semblances. The inventor, I thought, gives to the world creations which are palpable, which live and work.

Nikola Tesla

#37. 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.

Nikola Tesla

#38. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields.

Nikola Tesla

#39. A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.

Nikola Tesla

#40. When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be able to communicate with one another instantly, irrespective of distance.

Nikola Tesla

#41. We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences

Nikola Tesla

#42. It will soon be possible to transmit wireless messages around the world so simply that any individual can carry and operate his own apparatus.

Nikola Tesla

#43. When a coil is operated with currents of very high frequency, beautiful brush effects may be produced, even if the coil be of comparatively small dimensions. The experimenter may vary them in many ways, and, if it were nothing else, they afford a pleasing sight.

Nikola Tesla

#44. The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.

Nikola Tesla

#45. The last 29 days of the month are the toughest!

Nikola Tesla

#46. So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet ...

Nikola Tesla

#47. The idea of atomic energy is illusionary but it has taken so powerful a hold on the minds, that although I have preached against it for twenty-five years, there are still some who believe it to be realizable.

Nikola Tesla

#48. Every living being is an engine geared to the wheelwork of the universe. Though seemingly affected only by its immediate surrounding, the sphere of external influence extends to infinite distance.

Nikola Tesla

#49. If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn't sweat as much.

Nikola Tesla

#50. Its not the love you make. It's the love you give.

Nikola Tesla

#51. Now sticks 'n' stones'll break ya bones, a little tokin' never hurt no one. Let's toke, toke, toke about it.

Nikola Tesla

#52. It is not in the shallow physical imitation of men that women will assert first their equality and later their superiority, but in the awakening of the intellect of women.

Nikola Tesla

#53. Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

Nikola Tesla

#54. The opinion of the world does not affect me. I have placed as the real values in my life what follows when I am dead.

Nikola Tesla

#55. The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

Nikola Tesla

#56. The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result. He does not expect that his advanced ideas will be readily taken up. His work is like that of the planter - for the future. His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

Nikola Tesla

#57. We are all one. Only egos, beliefs, and fears separate us.

Nikola Tesla

#58. All perceptible matter comes from a primary substance, or tenuity beyond conception, filling all space, the akasha or luminiferous ether, which is acted upon by the life giving Prana or creative force, calling into existence, in never-ending cycles all things and phenomena.

Nikola Tesla

#59. Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using seventeen of my patents.

Nikola Tesla

#60. In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

Nikola Tesla

#61. My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made.

Nikola Tesla

#62. There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment

Nikola Tesla

#63. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.

Nikola Tesla

#64. The newspapers of the twenty-first century will give a mere 'stick' in the back pages to accounts of crime or political controversies, but will headline on the front pages the proclamation of a new scientific hypothesis.

Nikola Tesla

#65. This work somehow awakened my dormant powers of will and I began to practice self-control. At first my resolutions faded like snow in April, but in a little while I conquered my weakness and felt a pleasure I never knew before - that of doing as I willed.

Nikola Tesla

#66. Science is but a perversion of itself
unless it has as its ultimate goal
the betterment of humanity.

Nikola Tesla

#67. My wireless transmitter does not use Hertzian waves, which are a grievous myth, but sound waves in the aether ...

Nikola Tesla

#68. We wind a simple ring of iron with coils; we establish the connections to the generator, and with wonder and delight we note the effects of strange forces which we bring into play, which allow us to transform, to transmit and direct energy at will.

Nikola Tesla

#69. ...and led me to finally recognise that I was but an automaton devoid of free will in thought and action and merely responsible to the forces of the environment.

Nikola Tesla

#70. The beauty and the scent of roses can be used as a medicine and the sun rays as a food.

Nikola Tesla

#71. The feeling is constantly growing on me that I had been the first to hear the greeting of one planet to another.

Nikola Tesla

#72. 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.

Nikola Tesla

#73. 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.

Nikola Tesla

#74. Most certainly, some planets are not inhabited, but others are, and among these there must exist life under all conditions and phases of development.

Nikola Tesla

#75. To conquer by sheer force is becoming harder and harder every day. Defensive is getting continuously the advantage of offensive, as we progress in the satanic science of destruction.

Nikola Tesla

#76. The earth is bountiful, and where her bounty fails, nitrogen drawn from the air will refertilize her womb. I developed a process for this purpose in 1900. It was perfected fourteen years later under the stress of war by German chemists.

Nikola Tesla

#77. These are only new devices for putting the weak at the mercy of the strong.

Nikola Tesla

#78. My ear barely caught signals coming in regular succession which could not have been produced on earth ...

Nikola Tesla

#79. In a crystal we have clear evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and though we cannot understand the life of a crystal, it is nonetheless a living being

Nikola Tesla

#80. Inventors don't have time for married life.

Nikola Tesla

#81. My mother understood human nature better and never chided. She knew that a man cannot be saved from his own foolishness or vice by someone else's efforts or protests, but only by the use of his own will.

Nikola Tesla

#82. Jules Breton has spoken of the history of his life as being at the same time the genesis of his art. This is true of Nikola Tesla's evolution. His bent toward invention we may surely trace to his mother, who, as the wife of an eloquent clergyman in the Greek Church, made

Nikola Tesla

#83. By an irony of fate, my first employment was as a draughtsman. I hated drawing; it was for me the very worst of annoyances. Fortunately, it was not long before I secured the position I sought, that of chief electrician to the telephone company.

Nikola Tesla

#84. All the great religions contain wise prescriptions relating to the conduct of life, which hold good now as they did when they were promulgated.

Nikola Tesla

#85. I am equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian fatherland.

Nikola Tesla

#86. It seems that I have always been ahead of my time. I had to wait nineteen years before Niagara was harnessed by my system, fifteen years before the basic inventions for wireless which I gave to the world in 1893 were applied universally.

Nikola Tesla

#87. From childhood I was compelled to concentrate attention upon myself. This caused me much suffering, but to my present view, it was a blessing in disguise for it has taught me to appreciate the inestimable value of introspection in the preservation of life, as well as a means of achievement.

Nikola Tesla

#88. If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.

Nikola Tesla

#89. All peoples everywhere should have free energy sources.

Nikola Tesla

#90. Within a few years a simple and inexpensive device, readily carried about, will enable one to receive on land or sea the principal news, to hear a speech, a lecture, a song or play of a musical instrument, conveyed from any other region of the globe.

Nikola Tesla

#91. I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.

Nikola Tesla

#92. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences

Nikola Tesla

#93. Misunderstanding are always cause by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view. The best way to dispel ignorance of the doings of others is by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thoughts intercourse.

Nikola Tesla

#94. The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.

Nikola Tesla

#95. Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.

Nikola Tesla

#96. The universal utilization of water power and its long-distance transmission will supply every household with cheap power and will dispense with the necessity of burning fuel. The struggle for existence being lessened, there should be development along ideal rather than material lines.

Nikola Tesla

#97. To create and to annihilate material substance, cause it to aggregate in forms according to his desire, would be the supreme manifestation of the power of Man's mind, his most complete triumph over the physical world ...

Nikola Tesla

#98. It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering - only expensive - blind, faint-hearted, doubting world.

Nikola Tesla

#99. The by far greater number of human beings are never aware of what is passing around and within them, and millions fall victims of disease and die prematurely just on this account.

Nikola Tesla

#100. Money does not represent such a value as men have placed upon it. All my money has been invested into experiments with which I have made new discoveries enabling mankind to have a little easier life.

Nikola Tesla