Nikola Tesla
Perhaps it is better in this present world of ours that a revolutionary idea or invention instead of being helped and patted, be hampered and ill-treated in its adolescence - by want of means, by selfish interest, pedantry, stupidity and ignorance; that it be attacked and stifled; that it pass through bitter trials and tribulations, through the heartless strife of commercial existence. So do we get our light. So 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.Collection: Selfish
Universal peace as a result of cumulative effort through centuries past might come into existence quickly - not unlike a crystal that suddenly forms in a solution which has been slowly prepared. Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has as its ultimate goal the betterment of humanity.Collection: Past
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world. Our hearing extends to a small distance. Our sight is impeded by intervening bodies and shadows. To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions. We must transmit our intelligence, travel, transport the materials and transfer the energies necessary for our existence.Collection: Distance
A point of great importance would be first to know: what is the capacity of the earth? And what charge does it contain if electrified? Though we have no positive evidence of a charged body existing in space without other oppositely electrified bodies being near, there is a fair probability that the earth is such a body, for by whatever process it was separated from other bodies - and this is the accepted view of its origin - it must have retained a charge, as occurs in all processes of mechanical separation.Collection: Views
It is characteristic of fundamental discoveries, of great achievements of the intellect, that they retain an undiminished power upon the imagination of the thinker. The memorable experiment of Faraday with a disc rotating between two poles of a magnet, which has borne such magnificent fruit, has long passed into every-day experience; yet there are certain features about this embryo of the present dynamos and motors which even today appear to us striking, and are worthy of the most careful study.Collection: Memorable
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.Collection: Air
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Progress
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.Collection: Race
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.Collection: Running
It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering — only expensive — blind, faint-hearted, doubting world.Collection: Simple
No free energy device will ever be allowed to reach the market.Collection: Energy
But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is futile.Collection: Objectivity
The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.Collection: Christian
The beauty and the scent of roses can be used as a medicine and the sun rays as a food.Collection: Medicine
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.Collection: Perception
Love: I recognize the emotion for what it is, an irrational self-destructive impulse, which is disguised as joy.Collection: Self
The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.Collection: Odds
What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.Collection: Men
All matter comes from a primary substance, the luminiferous etherCollection: Substance
You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Stars
Woman will ignore precedent and startle civilization with their progress.Collection: Civilization
My wireless transmitter does not use Hertzian waves, which are a grievous myth, but sound waves in the aether.Collection: Sound
Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.Collection: Sacrifice
Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influencesCollection: Solitude
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.Collection: Mother
Is nature a giant cat? If so, who strokes its back?Collection: Cat
Einstein's relativity work is a magnificent mathematical garb which fascinates, dazzles and makes people blind to the underlying errors. The theory is like a beggar clothed in purple whom ignorant people take for a king... its exponents are brilliant men but they are metaphysicists rather than scientists.Collection: Kings
When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts.Collection: Future
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 really worked, is mine.Collection: Change
The scientists from Franklin to Morse were clear thinkers and did not produce erroneous theories. 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. 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.Collection: Reality
Great moments are born great opportunity.Collection: Moments
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.Collection: Struggle
My brain is only a receiver, in the UniverseCollection: Brain
I have always been ahead of my time.Collection: My Time
I do not rush into actual work. When I get a new idea, I start at once building it up in my imagination, and make improvements and operate the device in my mind. When I have gone so far as to embody everything in my invention, every possible improvement I can think of, and when I see no fault anywhere, I put into concrete form the final product of my brain.Collection: Thinking
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.Collection: Inspirational
Nature may reach the same result in many ways.Collection: May
I am even grateful to Einstein and others because through their erroneous theories they lead mankind away from that dangerous path I followed.Collection: Grateful
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.Collection: Inspirational
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 beingCollection: Principles
The mind is sharper and keener in seclusion and uninterrupted solitude. 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.Collection: Loneliness
Perhaps I failed, but I did my best, These masters of mine may do the rest.Collection: May
I am trying to awake the energy contained in the air. These are the main sources of energy. What is considered as empty space is just a manifestation of matter that is not awakened.Collection: Air
The last 29 days of the month are the toughest!Collection: Lasts
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.Collection: Song
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.Collection: Pride