" The present is theirs; the future, for which I really work, is mine. "
—  Nikola Tesla

  " The last 29 days of the month [are] the toughest "
—  Nikola Tesla

  " If ever we can ascertain at what period the earth's charge, when disturbed, oscillates, . . .
     we shall know a fact possibly of the greatest importance to the welfare of the human race. "
—  Nikola Tesla, 1893

" As soon as [the Wardenclyffe plant is] completed, it will be possible for a business man in New York to dictate instructions, and have them instantly appear in type at his office in London or elsewhere. He will be able to call up, from his desk, and talk to any telephone subscriber on the globe, without any change whatever in the existing equipment. 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. In the same manner any picture, character, drawing, or print can be transferred from one to another place. . . ."
—  Nikola Tesla, 1893

" My project was retarded by laws of nature.
   The world was not prepared for it. It was too far ahead of time.
   But the same laws will prevail in the end and make it a triumphal success. "
—  Nikola Tesla ... speaking of his "World Wireless" project on Long Island, 1919
      consider the date ... his majestic Wardenclyffe and Tower were already lost to him

" I have fame and untold wealth, more than this, and yet,
  how many articles have been written in which I was declared to be an impractical unsuccessful man,
  and how many poor, struggling writers have called me a visionary.
  Such is the folly and shortsightedness of the world! "
—  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

" Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
   When they separate, man is no more. "
—  Nikola Tesla

" 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

" My method is different. 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. "
—  Nikola Tesla

" Before I put a sketch on paper, the whole idea is worked out mentally.
In my mind I change the construction, make improvements, and even operate the device.
Without ever having drawn a sketch I can give the measurements of all parts to workmen, and when completed all these parts will fit, just as certainly as though I had made the actual drawings. It is immaterial to me whether I run my machine in my mind or test it in my shop.
The inventions I have conceived in this way have always worked. In thirty years there has not been a single exception. My first electric motor, the vacuum wireless light, my turbine engine and many other devices have all been developed in exactly this way. "
—  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, pedantery, 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 all that was great in the past was ridiculed, condemned, combatted, suppressed - only to emerge all the more powerfully, all the more triumphantly from the struggle. "
—  Nikola Tesla

   " War cannot 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. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. 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 1919

   " Science is but a perversion of itself unless it has, as its ultimate goal, the betterment of humanity "
—  Nikola Tesla 1919

   " It was during the Christmas holidays of 1911 that I began to realize the fact that the energy I was
working with was not of a static nature but of an oscillating nature, and that the energy was not
coming out of the Earth but that it rather was coming in to the Earth from some outside source. "
—  Nikola Tesla

On Invention:
  " It 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. "

  " 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. "

  " Of all the frictional resistance, 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

  " No matter what we attempt to do, no matter to what fields we turn our efforts, we are dependent on power. We have to evolve means of obtaining energy from stores which are forever inexhaustible, to perfect methods which do not imply consumption and waste of any material whatever. If we use fuel to get our power, we are living on our capital and exhausting it rapidly. This method is barbarous and wantonly wasteful and will have to be stopped in the interest of coming generations. "

  " 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 a planter -- for the future. His duty is to lay foundation of those who are to come and point the way. "

  " 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. "

  " We are confronted with portentous problems which can not be solved just by providing for our material existence, however abundantly. On the contrary, progress in this direction is fraught with hazards and perils not less menacing than those born from want and suffering. If we were to release the energy of the atoms or discover some other way of developing cheap and unlimited power at any point of the globe this accomplishment, instead of being a blessing, might bring disaster to mankind... The greatest good will come from the technical improvements tending to unification and harmony, and my wireless transmitter is preeminently such. By its means the human voice and likeness will be reproduced everywhere and factories driven thousands of miles from waterfalls furnishing the power; aerial machines will be propelled around the earth without a stop and the sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land... "
—  Nikola Tesla ... "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982.
                                 Originally appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919.

  " War cannot 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. Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about some day, insuring permanency of friendly relations. 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 ... "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982.
                                 Originally appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919.

On Edison:
Tesla made a very definite distinction between the inventor of useful appliances and the discoverer
of new principles . . . a pioneer who opens up new fields of knowledge into which thousands of
inventors flock to make commercial applications of the newly revealed information. Tesla declared
himself a discoverer and Edison an inventor; and he held the view that placing the two in the same
category would completely destroy all sense of the relative value of the two accomplishments ...

  " If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... I was a sorry witness of such doings, knowing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety per cent of his labor. "
—  Nikola Tesla ... New York Times, October 19, 1931.

On Mark Twain:
  " I had hardly completed my course at the Real Gymnasium when I was prostrated with a dangerous illness or rather, a score of them, and my condition became so desperate that I was given up by physicians. During this period I was permitted to read constantly, obtaining books from the Public Library which had been neglected and entrusted to me for classification of the works and preparation of the catalogues. One day I was handed a few volumes of new literature unlike anything I had ever read before and so captivating as to make me utterly forget my hopeless state. They were the earlier works of Mark Twain and to them might have been due the miraculous recovery which followed. Twenty-five years later, when I met Mr. Clemens and we formed a friendship between us, I told him of the experience and was amazed to see that great man of laughter burst into tears. "
—  Nikola Tesla ... "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982.
                                 Originally appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919.

  " In our dynamo machines, it is well known, we generate alternate currents which we direct by means of a commutator, a complicated device and, it may be justly said, the source of most of the troubles experienced in the operation of the machines. Now, the currents, so directed cannot be utilized in the motor, but must - again by means of a similar unreliable device - be reconverted into their original state of alternate currents. The function of the commutator is entirely external, and in no way does it affect the internal workings of the machines. In reality, therefore, all machines are alternate current machines, the currents appearing as continuous only in the external circuit during the transfer from generator to motor. In view simply of this fact, alternate currents would commend themselves as a more direct application of electrical energy, and the employment of continuous currents would only be justified if we had dynamos which would primarily generate, and motors which would be directly actuated by, such currents. "
—  Adopted from T.C. Martin, "The Inventions, Researches and Writings of Nikola Tesla,"
      New Work: Electrical Engineer, 1894, pp. 9-11.

On George Westinghouse:
  " George Westinghouse was, in my opinion, the only man on this globe who could take my alternating-current system under the circumstances then existing and win the battle against prejudice and money power. He was a pioneer of imposing stature, one of the world's true nobleman of whom America may well be proud and to whom humanity owes an immense debt of gratitude. "
—  Nikola Tesla ... Speech, Institute of Immigrant Welfare, Hotel Baltimore, New York, May 12, 1938, read in absentia.

On Voltaire:
  " had a veritable mania for finishing whatever I began, which often got me into difficulties. On one occasion I started to read the works of Voltaire when I learned, to my dismay, that there were close on one hundred large volumes in small print which that monster had written while drinking seventy-two cups of black coffee per diem. It had to be done, but when I laid aside the last book I was very glad, and said, "Never more! "
—  Nikola Tesla ... "My Inventions: the autobiography of Nikola Tesla", Hart Bros., 1982.
                                 Originally appeared in the Electrical Experimenter magazine in 1919.

" When the Great Truth, accidentally revealed and experimentally confirmed, is fully recognized, that this planet, with all its appalling immensity, is to electric currents virtually no more than a small metal ball and that by virtue of this fact many possibilities, each baffling imagination and of incalculable consequence, are rendered absolutely sure of accomplishment; when the first plant is inaugurated and it is shown that a telegraphic message, almost as secret and non-interferable as a thought, can be transmitted to any terrestrial distance, the sound of the human voice, with all its intonations and inflections faithfully and instantly reproduced at any other point of the globe, the energy of a waterfall made available for supplying light, heat or motive power, anywhere...on sea, or land, or high in the air...humanity will be like an ant heap stirred up with a stick. See the excitement coming ! "
—  Nikola Tesla ....... Electrical World and Engineer, March 5, 1904