There is no memory or retentive faculty based on lasting impression. What we designate as memory is but increased responsiveness to repeated stimuli.
Interpretation
Memory is not a reliable retention of experiences, but rather a heightened response to familiar stimuli.
In this quote, Nikola Tesla reflects on the nature of memory, suggesting that what we commonly understand as memory is not a perfect recording of past events, but rather an enhanced ability to respond to familiar situations due to repeated exposure. This perspective challenges the idea of memory as an infallible storage of information, highlighting instead the fluid and responsive nature of how we recall experiences.
In practice
In a psychology class discussing the nature of memory and perception.
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.
The sail, the play of its pulse so like our own lives: so thin and yet so full of life, so noiseless when it labors hardest, so noisy and impatient when least effective.
He does not regard the quantity of faith, but the quality. He does not measure its degree, but its truth. He will not break any bruised reed, nor quench any smoking flax. He will never let it be said that any perished at the foot of the cross.
There is hardly any mental misery worse than that of having our own serious phrases, our own rooted beliefs, caricatured by a charlatan or a hireling.
When a man resolves to avenge himself, he should first of all tear out the heart from his breast.
In the autumn of 1929 the mightiest of Americans were, for a brief time, revealed as human beings.
And if the City falls and one survives _x000D_ he shall carry the City within on the roads of exile _x000D_ he shall be the City
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