Nikola Tesla — "I have always been much interested in the question of women's physical and menta…"
I have always been much interested in the question of women's physical and mental superiority, and have found that women are the stronger sex.
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About Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Serbian-American inventor and electrical engineer whose alternating-current designs powered the modern electrical grid; died poor and largely forgotten. Closely associated with George Westinghouse (his AC-power business partner) and Mihajlo Pupin (fellow Serbian-American physicist at Columbia). For an intellectual contrast, see Thomas Edison, American inventor and direct-current advocate — Edison's direct-current power-distribution scheme was displaced by Tesla-Westinghouse AC in the 1890s 'War of Currents'. Edison ran a public-relations campaign electrocuting animals to discredit AC — the most famous engineering-ethics rivalry in American history. Tesla's AC won and powers nearly every electrical grid on Earth.
Details
Interview with Arthur Brisbane, 'When Woman Is Boss' (published in various newspapers)
Date: 1929
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Tesla argues that women are not the weaker sex but the stronger one — in both endurance and intellectual power. He rejects the default assumption that men are superior, presenting women's strength as a conclusion drawn from genuine study and observation. The statement flips the conventional gender hierarchy, framing women's advantage as a factual finding rather than a polite compliment or rhetorical flourish.
Relevance to Nikola Tesla
Tesla's reverence for women traced largely to his mother, Đuka Tesla — unschooled yet brilliantly inventive, she memorized epic poetry and built household tools herself. A lifelong celibate who avoided romantic attachment, Tesla idealized women's intellect and repeatedly predicted they would reshape civilization. His contrarian personality and ease with challenging orthodoxy made inverting the 'weaker sex' trope entirely consistent with his character and public statements.
The era
Tesla made such statements in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when the suffrage movement was cresting — the 19th Amendment granting U.S. women the vote passed in 1920. Victorian society enforced strict gender hierarchies, dismissing women's intellectual capacity and confining them to domestic roles. His claim that women were the stronger sex was genuinely radical at a moment when suffragettes were imprisoned and force-fed simply for demanding equal rights.
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