Nikola Tesla was a Serbian-American inventor, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, and futurist who is best known for his contributions to the design of the modern alternating current (AC) electricity supply system. Attempting to develop inventions he could patent and market, Tesla conducted a range of experiments with mechanical oscillators/generators, electrical discharge tubes, and early X-ray imaging. He also built a wireless-controlled boat, one of the first ever exhibited.
Tesla became well known as an inventor and demonstrated his achievements to celebrities and wealthy patrons at his lab, and was noted for his showmanship at public lectures. Throughout the 1890s, Tesla pursued his ideas for wireless lighting and worldwide wireless electric power distribution in his high-voltage, high-frequency power experiments in New York and Colorado Springs.
Some of the best quotes from Nikola Tesla are listed below.
- “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.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “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. Uncleanliness, which breeds disease and death, is not only a self-destructive but highly immoral habit.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another’s point of view.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Great moments are born from great opportunity.” – Nikola Tesla
- “I am credited with being one of the hardest workers and perhaps I am, if thought is the equivalent of labour, for I have devoted to it almost all of my waking hours. But if work is interpreted to be a definite performance in a specified time according to a rigid rule, then I may be the worst of idlers. Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of life-energy. I never paid such a price. On the contrary, I have thrived on my thoughts.” – Nikola Tesla
- “I do not believe in laziness, and I should like to see the loafer wiped from the face or the earth; but I want that those who are willing to work should accomplish their results with the least labor and in the best way.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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.” – Nikola Tesla
- “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.” – Nikola Tesla
- “I don’t care that they stole my idea… I care that they don’t have any of their own.” – Nikola Tesla
- “If Thomas Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search… Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.” – Nikola Tesla
- “If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6, and 9, then you would have a key to the universe.” – Nikola Tesla
- “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency, and vibration.” – Nikola Tesla
- “If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Intelligent people tend to have less friends than the average person. The smarter you are, the more selective you become.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Invention is the most important product of man’s creative brain. The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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. Precisely one of the most gratifying results of intellectual evolution is the continuous opening up of new and greater prospects.” – Nikola Tesla
- “It’s not the love you make. It’s the love you give.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labor and sacrifices made.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “My method is different. I do not rush into actual work. When I get an idea I start at once building it up in my imagination. I change the construction, make improvements, and operate the device entirely in my mind.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “Of all frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance, what Buddha called ‘the greatest evil in the world’. The friction which results from ignorance can be reduced only by the spread of knowledge and the unification of the heterogeneous elements of humanity. No effort could be better spent.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Of all things, I liked books best.” – Nikola Tesla
- “One has to be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.” – Nikola Tesla
- “That is the trouble with many inventors; they lack patience. They lack the willingness to work a thing out slowly and clearly and sharply in their mind, so that they can actually ‘feel it work.’ They want to try their first idea right off; and the result is they use up lots of money and lots of good material, only to find eventually that they are working in the wrong direction. We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains. Therein lies the profound difference between the individual and the whole.” – Nikola Tesla
- “The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. No big laboratory is needed in which to think. Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences beating upon us to cripple the creative mind. Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.” – Nikola Tesla
- “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
- “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. He lives and labors and hopes.” – Nikola Tesla
- “The spread of civilization may be likened to a fire; first, a feeble spark, next a flickering flame, then a mighty blaze, ever increasing in speed and power.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work.” – Nikola Tesla
- “Throughout space there is energy. Is this energy static or kinetic! If static our hopes are in vain; if kinetic – and this we know it is, for certain – then it is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.” – Nikola Tesla
- “We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.” – Nikola Tesla
- “We are all one.” – Nikola Tesla
- “We are whirling through endless space, with an inconceivable speed, all around everything is spinning, everything is moving, everywhere there is energy.” – Nikola Tesla
- “We build but to tear down. Most of our work and resource is squandered. Our onward march is marked by devastation. Everywhere there is an appalling loss of time, effort and life. A cheerless view, but true.” – Nikola Tesla
- “We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences.” – Nikola Tesla
- “What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.” – Nikola Tesla
- “What we now want is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife… Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.” – Nikola Tesla
- “When we speak of man, we have a conception of humanity as a whole, and before applying scientific methods to the investigation of his movement, we must accept this as a physical fact. But can anyone doubt to-day that all the millions of individuals and all the innumerable types and characters constitute an entity, a unit? 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. I cut myself in the finger, and it pains me: this finger is a part of me. I see a friend hurt, and it hurts me, too: my friend and I are one. And now I see stricken down an enemy, a lump of matter which, of all the lumps of matter in the universe, I care least for, and it still grieves me. Does this not prove that each of us is only part of a whole?” – Nikola Tesla
- “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 the remoteness of the turmoil of life and the inspiring influence of the altitude calm your blood; your step gets firm and sure and you begin to look – for dizzier heights.” – Nikola Tesla
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