I have obtained... spark discharges extending through more than one hundred feet and carrying currents of one thousand amperes, electromotive forces approximating twenty million volts, chemically active streamers covering areas of several thousand square feet, and electrical disturbances in the natural media surpassing those caused by lightning, in intensity. Whatever the future may bring, the universal application of these great principles is fully assured, though it may be long in coming. With the opening of the first power plant, incredulity will give way to wonderment, and this to ingratitude, as ever before.
Nikola TeslaRelated topics
carrying coming electrical feet future great hundred incredulity ingratitude intensity lightning media natural plant power spark square surpassing thousand twenty universal way whatever wondermentRelated quotes
It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect.... The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.
William Thomson
There are over seventeen thousand golf courses in America. They average over one hundred and fifty acres a piece – that's three million plus acres, four thousand, eight hundred and twenty square miles – you could build two Rhode Islands and a Delaware for the homeless on the land currently being wasted on this meaningless, mindless, arrogant, elitist, racist-there's another thing; the only blacks you'll find at country clubs are carrying trays-and a boring game. A boring game for boring people. You ever watch golf on television? It's like watching flies fuck! And a mindless game, too.
George Carlin
And at our feet unbroken lay
The glass that had whirled us thither away:
And in the grass, among the flowers
We sat and wished all sorts of things:
O, we were wealthier than kings!
We ruled the world for several hours!And then, it seemed, we knew not why,
All the daisies began to die.
We wished them alive again; but soon
The trees all fled up towards the moon
Like peacocks through the sunlit air:
And the butterflies flapped into silver fish;
And each wish spoiled another wish;
Till we threw the glass down in despair;
For, getting whatever you want to get,
Is like drinking tea from a fishing net.
Alfred Noyes
When I resided at Bath I had long been acquainted with the theory of optics and mechanics, and wanted only that experience so necessary in the practical part of these sciences. This I acquired by degrees at that place where in my leisure hours, by way of amusement, I made several two-foot, five-foot, seven-foot, ten-foot and twenty-foot Newtonian telescopes, beside others, of the Gregorian form, of eight, twelve, and eighteen inches, and two, three, five, and ten feet focal length. In this way I made not less than two hundred seven-foot, one hundred and fifty ten-foot, and about eighty twenty-foot mirrors, not to mention the Gregorian telescopes.
William Herschel
I read with great interest all that you have written me about what is called Colonialism, namely: bringing forward backward races and opening up the jungles. I was brought up to feel proud of much that we had done. Certainly in India, with all its history, religion and ancient forms of despotic rule, Britain has a story to tell which will look quite well against the background of the coming hundred years. ... I am sceptical about universal suffrage for the Hottentots even if refined by proportional representation. The British and American Democracies were slowly and painfully forged and even they are not perfect yet.
Winston Churchill