Lord Kelvin Quotes

Lord Kelvin provides witty, plain-spoken takes on mathematics and physics that appeal to curious minds.

34 quotes

1. 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 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.

2. There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon the practical applications of science. 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 earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.

3. Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.

4. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

5. 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.

6. There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

7. Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

8. Tesla has contributed more to electrical science than any man up to his time.

9. Radio has no future. X-ray is a hoax

10. MacTutor Profile at University of St. Andrews

11. Lord Kelvin online

12. Kelvin is Lord! - satirical website devoted to the 'worship' of Lord Kelvin

13. 'William Thomson: king of Victorian physics' by Mark McCartney in Physics World (1 December 2002)

14. Measuring the Absolute: William Thomson and Temperature (2002) by Hasok Chang and Sang Wook Yi (PDF file)

15. The Molecular Tactics of a Crystal (1894)

16. Baltimore lectures on molecular dynamics and the wave theory of light (1904)

17. Mathematical and physical papers Volume V (1911)

18. Treatise on natural philosophy Vol. 1 (1912 - 1923)

19. Treatise on natural philosophy (Vol. 2)

20. If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.

21. When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.

22. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

23. If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

24. 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.

25. 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.

26. Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

27. You know only insofar as you can measure.

28. Fourier is a mathematical poem.

29. When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

30. The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.

31. The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.

32. All of science can be divided into physics and stamp-collecting.

33. [Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

34. 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...