Lord Kelvin
In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.Collection: Science
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.Collection: Women
The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.
Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.
The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.Collection: Measurement
I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.Collection: Math
There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.Collection: Science
If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.Collection: Believe
Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.Collection: Imagination
When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.Collection: Discovery
Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.Collection: Technology
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.Collection: Math
To measure is to know.Collection: Knows
Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and fancy women.Collection: Horse
If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.Collection: Science
Christianity without the cross is nothing. The cross was the fitting close of a life of rejection, scorn and defeat. But in no true sense have these things ceased or changed. Jesus is still He whom man despiseth, and the rejected of men. The world has never admired Jesus, for moral courage is yet needed in every one of its high places by him who would "confess" Christ. The "offense" of the cross, therefore, has led men in all ages to endeavor to be rid of it, and to deny that it is the power of God in the world.Collection: Jesus
If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.Collection: Numbers
Ether is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminferous ether.Collection: Reality
I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.Collection: Believe
There is nothing in science which teaches the origin of anything at all.Collection: Science
You know only insofar as you can measure.Collection: Knows
We only know God in His works, but we are forced by science to admit and to believe with absolute confidence in a Directive Power-in an influence other than physical, or dynamical, or electrical forces.Collection: Believe
Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.Collection: Hard Work
Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.Collection: Common Sense
All of science can be divided into physics and stamp-collecting.Collection: Physics
I can never satisfy myself until I can make a mechanical model of a thing. If I can make a mechanical model, I can understand it. As long as I cannot make a mechanical model all the way through I cannot understand.Collection: Acceptance
Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.Collection: Mathematics
It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.Collection: Moving
Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but ' vector ' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.Collection: Survival
Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument in the treatment of nearly every recondite question in modern physics.Collection: Beautiful
There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application.Collection: Mistake
Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.Collection: Knowledge
The vortex theory [of the atom] is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about dreams.Collection: Dream
[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.Collection: Events
[Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem.Collection: Science
The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.Collection: Ideas
Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it.Collection: Freedom
We all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own. . . . [This] may seem wild, and visionary; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific.Collection: Believe
In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.Collection: Numbers
To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.Collection: Essentials
Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.Collection: Math
Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.Collection: Strong
The fact that mathematics does such a good job of describing the Universe is a mystery that we don't understand. And a debt that we will probably never be able to repay.Collection: Jobs
Nothing can be more fatal to progress than a too confident reliance on mathematical symbols; for the student is only too apt to take the easier course, and consider the formula not the fact as the physical reality.Collection: Reality
Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter throughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.Collection: Ocean
I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.Collection: Sound
The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.Collection: Knowledge