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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes that every individual operates within a larger cosmic framework, influencing and being influenced by distant realities.
Nikola Tesla's quote conveys the idea that each person is a critical component of the universe's intricate machinery. While individuals may feel limited by their immediate environment, their actions and existence resonate beyond their immediate surroundings, suggesting that our lives are interconnected within a vast web of influence that stretches infinitely.
In practice
During a lecture on the interconnectedness of life, one might quote Tesla to highlight how every action impacts the greater whole.
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.
Our senses enable us to perceive only a minute portion of the outside world.
The history of science shows that theories are perishable. With every new truth that is revealed we get a better understanding of Nature and our conceptions and views are modified.
The Secretary of Hygiene or Physical Culture will be far more important in the cabinet of the President of the United States who holds office in the year 2035 than the Secretary of War.
I am unwilling to accord to some small−minded and jealous individuals the satisfaction of having thwarted my efforts. These men are to me nothing more than microbes of a nasty disease. 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.
Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more.
You can share your testimony in many ways, by the words you speak, by the example you set, by the manner in which you live your life.
People who have been wronged will attempt to right the wrong; they would not be people if they didn't. They can rarely afford to be scrupulous about the means they will use. They will use such means as come to hand. Neither, in the main, will they distinguish one oppressor from another, nor see through to the root principle of their oppression.
The Conspiracy Theory of Society... [is] a typical result of the secularization of a religious superstition. The belief in the Homeric gods whose conspiracies explain the history of the Trojan War is gone. The gods are abandoned. But their place is filled by powerful men or groups - sinister pressure groups whose wickedness is responsible for all the evils we suffer from - such as the Learned Elders of Zion, or the monopolists, or the capitalists, or the imperialists.
The tectonic layers of our lives rest so tightly one on top of the other that we always come up against earlier events in later ones, not as matter that has been fully formed and pushed aside, but absolutely present and alive. I understand this. Nonetheless, I sometimes find it hard to bear.
The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.
I sometimes think that the price of liberty is not so much eternal vigilance as eternal dirt.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.