Nikola Tesla

There are three possible solutions to the problem of increase of human energy: nutrition, peace, work.

As long as there are different nationalities, there will be patriotism. That feeling has to be rooted out from our hearts before the permanent peace is established. It should be replaced by love towards nature and scientific ideal. Science and inventions are strong forces which will lead to its termination.

I could only achieve success in my life through self-discipline, and I applied it until my wish and my will became one.

Anti-social behavior is a trait of intelligence in a world full of conformists.

Of all the frictional resistances, the one that most retards human movement is ignorance.

To know each other we must reach beyond the sphere of our sense perceptions.

Our entire biological system, the brain, and the Earth itself, work on the same frequencies.

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.

I do not believe that matter and energy are interchangeable, any more than are the body and soul. There is just so much matter in the universe and it cannot be destroyed. As I see life on this planet, there is no individuality. It may sound ridiculous to say so, but I believe each person is but a wave passing through space, ever-changing from minute to minute as it travels along, finally, some day, just becoming dissolved.

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.

If the genius of invention were to reveal to-morrow the secret of immortality, of eternal beauty and youth, for which all humanity is aching, the same inexorable agents which prevent a mass from changing suddenly its velocity would likewise resist the force of the new knowledge until time gradually modifies human thought.

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.

In crystal we have a pure evidence of the existence of a formative life principle, and although in spite of everything we cannot understand the life of crystals - it is still a living being.

There is no conflict between the ideal of religion and the ideal of science, but science is opposed to theological dogmas because science is founded on fact. To me, the universe is simply a great machine which never came into being and never will end. The human being is no exception to the natural order. Man, like the universe, is a machine.

I myself eschew all stimulants. I also practically abstain from meat.

In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.

The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from without. He is like a float tossed about by the waves of a turbulent sea.

The year 2100 will see eugenics universally established. In past ages, the law governing the survival of the fittest roughly weeded out the less desirable strains. Then man's new sense of pity began to interfere with the...

The ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of human nature to human needs.

We crave for new sensations but soon become indifferent to them. The wonders of yesterday are today common occurrences.