As in nature, all is ebb and tide, all is wave motion, so it seems that in all branches of industry, alternating currents - electric wave motion - will have the sway.
Interpretation
Nature and industry are both governed by cycles of ebb and flow.
Nikola Tesla's quote draws a parallel between the natural world and the realm of industry, suggesting that just as nature experiences cycles of ebb and flow, so too does the progress and operation of industries. He emphasizes the significance of alternating currents, likening them to waves that dominate both the natural landscape and technological advancements, thereby illustrating the interconnectedness of nature and progress in human endeavors.
In practice
In a speech about innovation, one might quote Tesla to emphasize how new technologies arise in cycles.
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.
More than two decades after the birth of Louise Brown, and all the hysteria that surrounded her 'test tube' conception, we should know that institutions, not technologies, create dystopias. Artificially conceived children are everywhere, beloved by their parents, and they haven't radically altered our world.
I have had my results for a long time: but I do not yet know how I am to arrive at them.
It is my supposition that the Universe in not only queerer than we imagine, is queerer than we can imagine.
Everybody who's a physician, who makes vaccines, who wants to find the cure for cancer. Everybody who wants to do any medical good for humankind got the passion for that before he or she was 10.
It is an error to imagine that evolution signifies a constant tendency to increased perfection. That process undoubtedly involves a constant remodeling of the organism in adaptation to new conditions; but it depends on the nature of those conditions whether the direction of the modifications effected shall be upward or downward.
But when it has been shown by the researches of Pasteur that the septic property of the atmosphere depended not on the oxygen, or any gaseous constituent, but on minute organisms suspended in it, which owed their energy to their vitality, it occurred to me that decomposition in the injured part might be avoided without excluding the air, by applying as a dressing some material capable of destroying the life of the floating particles. Upon this principle I have based a practice.
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