Nikola Tesla — "In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occ…"
In the twenty-first century, the robot will take the place which slave labor occupied in ancient civilization.
Get This Quote & Author's Image Illustrated On:
Click any product to generate a realistic preview. Up to 3 at a time.
* Initial load can take up to 90 seconds — revising the preview in another color is nearly instant.
Kitchen
Apparel
Other
More from Nikola Tesla
"The human being is a self-propelled automaton entirely under the control of external influences. Willful and predetermined though they appear, his actions are governed not from within, but from withou…"
"As long as there are different nationalities, there will be patriotism. That feeling has to be rooted out from our hearts before the permanent peace is established. It should be replaced by love towar…"
"I would give a thousand secrets of nature upon which I stumbled by accident, in exchange for this one which I extracted from nature, in spite of all the miracles and dangers which I faced."
"I do not marry, for I consider that for an inventor, marriage is a great obstacle."
"But instinct is something which transcends knowledge. We have, undoubtedly, certain finer fibers that enable us to perceive truths when logical deduction, or any other willful effort of the brain, is …"
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.
Verification
Unverifiable
Found in 1 providers: gemini
1 source checked
Understanding this quote
What it means
Automation and intelligent machines will handle the repetitive, exhausting, dehumanizing work that societies once forced enslaved people to perform. Just as ancient economies depended on slave labor for physical drudgery, future economies will delegate that burden to machines, freeing humans from toil and potentially enabling a more equitable civilization where no person must serve as another's tool.
Relevance to Nikola Tesla
Tesla spent his life automating the transmission of energy and envisioning machines that amplified human capability. His AC motor literally replaced human and animal muscle with rotating electromagnetic force. He filed patents on early radio-controlled robotics, called them 'teleautomata,' and genuinely believed engineered systems would eliminate dangerous, repetitive human labor, reflecting his core conviction that science exists to liberate humanity.
The era
Tesla made this prediction in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when industrialization was rapidly replacing agricultural hand labor with machines, labor movements were fighting brutal factory conditions, and the memory of American slavery was barely a generation old. Electricity itself was transforming manufacturing, making the prospect of fully automated labor feel not merely fantastical but historically inevitable and morally necessary.
AI-generated insights based on extensive research and information for context. Factual errors? Email [email protected].