Nikola Tesla, a Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer, revolutionized modern technology with his pioneering work in alternating current (AC) electricity supply systems. Born in 1856, Tesla immigrated to the United States in 1884, where he collaborated briefly with Thomas Edison before diverging paths. Tesla’s innovations include the AC induction motor, the Tesla coil, and wireless transmission of electricity, laying the groundwork for modern technologies like radio and radar. Despite financial struggles and overshadowing by contemporaries, Tesla’s genius shines posthumously as his contributions are increasingly recognized. He died in 1943 at 86, leaving a lasting legacy that continues to inspire generations of scientists, engineers, and inventors worldwide.
Nikola Tesla Quotes
1. “If you want to find the secrets of the universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration.”
— Nikola Tesla
2. “Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.”
— Nikola Tesla
3. “I don’t care that they stole my idea… I care that they don’t have any of their own.”
— Nikola Tesla
4. “The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.”
— Nikola Tesla
5. “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
6. “If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.”
— Nikola Tesla
7. “Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.”
— Nikola Tesla
8. “Of all things, I liked books best.”
— Nikola Tesla
9. “The day science begins to study non-physical phenomena, it will make more progress in one decade than in all the previous centuries of its existence.”
— Nikola Tesla
10. “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
11. “A new idea must not be judged by its immediate results.”
— Nikola Tesla
12. “I could only achieve success in my life through self-discipline, and I applied it until my wish and my will became one.”
— Nikola Tesla
13. “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
14. “What one man calls God, another calls the laws of physics.”
— Nikola Tesla
15. “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
16. “Our entire biological system, the brain, and the Earth itself, work on the same frequencies.”
— Nikola Tesla
17. “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
18. “We all make mistakes, and it is better to make them before we begin.”
— Nikola Tesla
19. “Electric power is everywhere present in unlimited quantities and can drive the world’s machinery without the need of coal, oil, gas, or any other of the common fuels.”
— Nikola Tesla
20. “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
21. “If you only knew the magnificence of the 3, 6 and 9, then you would have the key to the universe.”
— Nikola Tesla
22. “My brain is only a receiver, in the Universe.”
— Nikola Tesla
23. “Throughout the infinite, the forces are in a perfect balance, and hence the energy of a single thought may determine the motion of a universe.”
— Nikola Tesla
24. “No free energy device will ever be allowed to reach the market.”
— Nikola Tesla
25. “Inventors don’t have time for married life.”
— Nikola Tesla
26. “The idea came like a flash of lightning and in an instant the truth was revealed.”
— Nikola Tesla
27. “It’s not the love you make. It’s the love you give.”
— Nikola Tesla
28. “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
29. “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.”
— Nikola Tesla
30. “I have always been ahead of my time.”
— Nikola Tesla
31. “Love: I recognize the emotion for what it is, an irrational self-destructive impulse, which is disguised as joy.”
— Nikola Tesla
32. “Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.”
— Nikola Tesla
33. “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.”
— Nikola Tesla
34. “When wireless is fully applied the earth will be converted into a huge brain, capable of response in every one of its parts.”
— Nikola Tesla
35. “Great moments are born great oppurtunity.”
— Nikola Tesla
36. “The Buddhist expresses it in one way, the Christian in another, but both say the same: We are all one.”
— Nikola Tesla
37. “You may live to see man-made horrors beyond your comprehension.”
— Nikola Tesla
38. “Peace can only come as a natural consequence of universal enlightenment.”
— Nikola Tesla
39. “Each day we go to our work in the hope of discovering.”
— Nikola Tesla
40. “Perhaps I failed, but I did my best, These masters of mine may do the rest.”
— Nikola Tesla
41. “The desire that guides me in all I do is the desire to harness the forces of nature to the service of mankind.”
— Nikola Tesla
42. “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
43. “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
44. “There is no energy in matter other than that received from the environment.”
— Nikola Tesla
45. “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
46. “I do not think you can name many great inventions that have been made by married men.”
— Nikola Tesla
47. “My belief is firm in a law of compensation. The true rewards are ever in proportion to the labour and sacrifices made.”
— Nikola Tesla
48. “Originality thrives in seclusion free of outside influences.”
— Nikola Tesla
49. “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
50. “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.”
— Nikola Tesla
51. “Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance.”
— Nikola Tesla
52. “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
53. “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
54. “Of all things I liked books best. My father had a large library and whenever I could manage I tried to satisfy my passion for reading.”
— Nikola Tesla
55. “There is no subject more captivating, more worthy of study, than nature. To understand this great mechanism, to discover the forces which are active, and the laws which govern them, is the highest aim of the intellect of man.”
— Nikola Tesla
56. “In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.”
— Nikola Tesla
57. “The beauty and the scent of roses can be used as a medicine and the sun rays as a food.”
— Nikola Tesla
58. “All matter comes from a primary substance, the luminiferous ether.”
— Nikola Tesla
59. “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
60. “Crystals are living beings at the beginning of creation.”
— Nikola Tesla
61. “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
62. “To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.”
— Nikola Tesla
63. “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
64. “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
65. “We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences.”
— Nikola Tesla
66. “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
67. “Nature may reach the same result in many ways.”
— Nikola Tesla
68. “Even matter called inorganic, believed to be dead, responds to irritants and gives unmistakable evidence of a living principle within. Everything that exists, organic or inorganic, animated or inert, is susceptible to stimulus from the outside.”
— Nikola Tesla
69. “My Mother had taught me to seek all truth in the Bible.”
— Nikola Tesla
70. “The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention.”
— Nikola Tesla
71. “The last 29 days of the month are the toughest!”
— Nikola Tesla
72. “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
73. “My wireless transmitter does not use Hertzian waves, which are a grievous myth, but sound waves in the aether…”
— Nikola Tesla
74. “It is a simple feat of scientific electrical engineering – only expensive – blind, faint-hearted, doubting world.”
— Nikola Tesla
75. “When natural inclination develops into a passionate desire, one advances towards his goal in seven-league boots.”
— Nikola Tesla
76. “Is nature a giant cat? If so, who strokes its back?”
— Nikola Tesla
77. “It is a mere question of time when men will succeed in attaching their machinery to the very wheelwork of nature.”
— Nikola Tesla
78. “Every effort under compulsion demands a sacrifice of energy. I never paid such a price.”
— Nikola Tesla
79. “So we find that the three possible solutions of the great problem of increasing human energy are answered by the three words: food, peace, work.”
— Nikola Tesla
80. “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
81. “The entire Earth will be converted into a huge brain.”
— Nikola Tesla
82. “So astounding are the facts in this connection, that it would seem as though the Creator, himself had electrically designed this planet…”
— Nikola Tesla
83. “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
84. “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
85. “The future will show whether my foresight is as accurate now as it has proved heretofore.”
— Nikola Tesla
86. “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.”
— Nikola Tesla
87. “It has cost me years of thought to arrive at certain results, by many believed to be unattainable, for which there are now numerous claimants, and the number of these is rapidly increasing, like that of the colonels in the South after the war.”
— Nikola Tesla
88. “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
89. “If Mr. Edison had thought smarter he wouldn’t sweat as much.”
— Nikola Tesla
90. “Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.”
— Nikola Tesla
91. “Marconi is a good fellow. Let him continue. He is using 17 of my patents.”
— Nikola Tesla
92. “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
93. “My ear barely caught signals coming in regular succession which could not have been produced on earth…”
— Nikola Tesla
94. “We should begin at the very root from which we spring, we should effect a radical reform in the character of the food.”
— Nikola Tesla
95. “I am equally proud of my Serbian origin and my Croatian fatherland.”
— Nikola Tesla
96. “I predict that very shortly the old-fashioned incandescent lamp, having a filament heated to brightness by the passage of electric current through it, will entirely disappear.”
— Nikola Tesla
97. “Up to that time I never realized that I possessed any particular gift of discovery, but Lord Rayleigh, whom I always considered as an ideal man of science, had said so and if that was the case, I felt that I should concentrate on some big idea.”
— Nikola Tesla
98. “With a different form of wireless instrument devised by me some years ago it was found practicable to locate a body of metallic ore below the ground, and it seems that a submarine could be similarly detected.”
— Nikola Tesla
99. “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
100. “A century from now it will no more occur to a normal person to mate with a person eugenically unfit than to marry a habitual criminal.”
— Nikola Tesla
101. “All peoples everywhere should have free energy sources.”
— Nikola Tesla
102. “The individual is ephemeral, races and nations come and pass away, but man remains.”
— Nikola Tesla
103. “Life is and will ever remain an equation incapable of solution, but it contains certain known factors.”
— Nikola Tesla
104. “Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.”
— Nikola Tesla
105. “Every living being is an engine geared to the wheel-work of the universe.”
— Nikola Tesla
106. “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
107. “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
108. “Sometimes I feel that by not marrying, I made too great a sacrifice to my work.”
— Nikola Tesla
109. “I have harnessed the cosmic rays and caused them to operate a motive device.”
— Nikola Tesla
110. “But I hope that it will also be demonstrated soon that in my experiments in the West I was not merely beholding a vision, but had caught sight of a great and profound truth.”
— Nikola Tesla
111. “Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term.”
— Nikola Tesla
112. “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
113. “To stop war by the perfection of engines of destruction alone, might consume centuries and centuries. Other means must be employed to hasten the end.”
— Nikola Tesla
