“Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe.”

— Nikola Tesla

"Experiments With Alternate Currents Of High Potential And High Frequency" (February 1892)
Context: Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe. This idea is not novel. Men have been led to it long ago by instinct or reason; it has been expressed in many ways, and in many places, in the history of old and new. We find it in the delightful myth of Antaeus, who derives power from the earth; we find it among the subtle speculations of one of your splendid mathematicians and in many hints and statements of thinkers of the present time. 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.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 31, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Ere many generations pass, our machinery will be driven by a power obtainable at any point of the universe." by Nikola Tesla?

Nikola Tesla125

Serbian American inventor 1856–1943

Related quotes

“the companions of our childhood always possess a certain power over our minds which hardly any later friend can obtain.”

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus

Source: Frankenstein

“Whoever voluntarily undertakes the necessary office of rearing and educating, obtains the parental power without generation.”

Francis Hutcheson (philosopher) (1694–1746) Irish philosopher

A System Of Moral Philosophy (1755), Book II, Ch. II

“The argument that new vision becomes the reference point for the future, is a line that I have been driven to use on many occasions.”

Nicholas Serota (1946) British curator

The Dimbleby Lecture 2000

“Our national strife springs not from our permanent part; not from the land we inhabit: not from our national homestead. There is no possible severing of this but would multiply and not mitigate evils among us. In all its adaptations and aptitudes it demands union and abhors separation. In fact, it would ere long force reunion, however much of blood and treasure the separation might have cost. Our strife pertains to ourselves — to the passing generations of men — and it can without convulsion be hushed forever with the passing of one generation.”

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

1860s, Second State of the Union address (1862)

“Look the point is … er, what is the point? It is a tough job but somebody has got to do it.”

Boris Johnson (1964) British politician, historian and journalist

Toby Helm, "Boris Johnson named shadow arts minister", Daily Telegraph, 7 May 2004, p. 12.
On being appointed Shadow Arts Minister.
2000s, 2004

“[In a later footnote, he explains further:] "children can never be upbraided with their having had a felon for a father: whereas the descendants of a white person, married to a black one, would, for many generations, by their complexion, proclaim their origin. Accordingly, though many mulattoes and people of colour have obtained wealth, I remember no instance, in any European colony, of their having obtained rank."”

Jonathan Boucher (1738–1804) English minister

"A View of the Causes and Consequences of the American Revolution" (London, Robinson, 1797)

“Conflict situations are driven by concepts of victory, power, and elimination of inherited culture, and not by the underlying values of civilization. There are many interpretations of Islam within the wider Islamic community, but generally we are instructed to leave the world a better place than it was when we came into it.”

Aga Khan IV (1936) 49th and current Imam of Nizari Ismailism

Interview with Robert Ivy (FAIA), in Architectural Record (31 August 2001)
Context: Conflict situations are driven by concepts of victory, power, and elimination of inherited culture, and not by the underlying values of civilization. There are many interpretations of Islam within the wider Islamic community, but generally we are instructed to leave the world a better place than it was when we came into it. The Aga Khan Award for Architecture seeks to make a better place in physical terms. This means trying to bring values into environments, buildings, and contexts that improve the quality of life for future generations.