Nikola Tesla Quotes

“I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success. Such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.”

“With ideas it is like with dizzy heights you climb: at first they cause you discomfort and you are anxious to get down, distrustful of your own powers; but soon your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look for dizzier heights.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“It is paradoxical, yet true, to say, that the more we know, the more ignorant we become in the absolute sense, for it is only through enlightenment that we become conscious of our limitations.”

“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.”

“Today's scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.”

“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.”

“Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”

“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.”

“Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.”

“Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another's point of view.”

“The spread of civilisation may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.”

“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.”

“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.”

“In a time not distant, it will be possible to flash any image formed in thought on a screen and render it visible at any place desired.”

“In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labour occupied in ancient civilisation.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

“The economic transmission of power without wires is of all-surpassing importance to man. By its means he will gain complete mastery of the air, the sea and the desert.”

“The ideal solution of the problem of transportation will be arrived at only when the complete annihilation of distance in the transmission of power shall have become a commercial reality. That day we shall invade the domain of the bird.”

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

“It should be borne in mind that electrical energy obtained by harnessing a waterfall is probably fifty times more effective than fuel energy.”