LORD KELVIN

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.

The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.

In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.

Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.

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

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

You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion. Overwhelming strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us.

Radio has no future. Wireless [telegraphy] is all very well but I'd rather send a message by a boy on a pony

You, in this country, are subjected to the British insularity in weights and measures; you use the foot, inch and yard. I am obliged to use that system, but must apologize to you for doing so, because it is so inconvenient, and I hope Americans will do everything in their power to introduce the French metrical system. ... I look upon our English system as a wickedly, brain-destroying system of bondage under which we suffer. The reason why we continue to use it, is the imaginary difficulty of making a change, and nothing else; but I do not think in America that any such difficulty should stand in the way of adopting so splendidly useful a reform

To measure is to know. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

The more you understand what is wrong with an entity, the more valuable that entity becomes

This time next year,—this time ten years,—this time one hundred years,—probably it will be just as easy as we think it is to understand that glass of water, which now seems so plain and simple. I cannot doubt but that these things, which now seem to us so mysterious, will be no mysteries at all; that the scales will fall from our eyes; that we shall learn to look on things in a different way—when that which is now a difficulty will be the only commonsense and intelligible way of looking at the subject

Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

Energy Is Conserved.

I am never satisfied until I can make a mathematical model of what I am studying. If I succeed in making one, I understand. If I cannot, I do not understand.

I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.

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

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.

To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.

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.

[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.

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.

I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.

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.