If we use our 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 heat of the sun's rays represents an immense amount of energy vastly in excess of waterpower...The sun's energy controlled to create lakes and rivers for motive purposes and transformation of arid deserts into fertile land.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the need to harness solar energy instead of depleting our natural resources.
Nikola Tesla argues that relying on traditional energy sources is unsustainable and wasteful. He advocates for the utilization of the sun's vast energy potential to create sustainable resources, such as lakes and fertile land, which will benefit future generations. Tesla's vision underscores the importance of renewable energy as a solution to the environmental challenges we face.
In practice
In a speech about renewable energy policy, one might quote Tesla to advocate for solar investment.
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.
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.
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.
Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
Just one living cell in the human body is, more complex than New York City.
From the point of view of basic physics, the most interesting phenomena are, of course, in the new places, the places where the rules do not work - not the places where they do work! That is the way in which we discover new rules.
Science fiction writers aren't fortune tellers. Fortune tellers are fakes.
Even though NASA tries to simulate launch, and we practice in simulators, it's not the same - it's not even close to the same.
What I want to do is demonstrate that biology can learn how to make a vast array of molecules that people thought were outside the realm of biology.
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