Be alone, that is the secret of invention; be alone, that is when ideas are born.
Nikola Tesla (1856–1943) was born in Smiljan, in the Lika region, and studied in Graz and Prague before leaving for the United States in 1884. His work on alternating current laid the foundation of modern electrical power systems. He filed around three hundred patents, and died without property in a New York hotel.
About this theme: Creativity
Creativity is usually discussed as inspiration arriving from outside, and least often as what it mostly is: work done on days when it does not want to be done. The tension is old. Antiquity had muses, Romanticism had genius, and the twentieth century had the working habits of writers who rose at five because otherwise nothing happened at all.
More by Nikola Tesla
- The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine.
- If your hate could be turned into electricity, it would light up the whole world.
- The scientific man does not aim at an immediate result; his duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.
- Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter.
More on Creativity
- Talent hits a target no one else can hit; genius hits a target no one else can see.— Arthur Schopenhauer
- Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.— Rumi
- Either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.— Benjamin Franklin
- Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.— George Bernard Shaw
- You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star.— Friedrich Nietzsche