James C. Maxwell Quotes

Science is not a thing. It's a verb. It's a way of thinking about things. It's a way of looking for natural explanations for all phenomena.

Experience by itself is not science.

Observation is a passive science, experimentation an active science.

There are three principal means of acquiring knowledge available to us: observation of nature, reflection, and experimentation. Observation collects facts; reflection combines them; experimentation verifies the result of that combination.

We must have the real thing before we can have a science of a thing.

We must trust to nothing but facts: these are presented to us by nature and cannot deceive. We ought, in every instance, to submit our reasoning to the test of experiment, and never to search for truth but by the natural road of experiment and observation.

In nature, when you conduct science, it is the natural world that is the ultimate decider in what is true and what is not.

Theorists can be wrong; only nature is always right.

The heart of science is measurement.

The good thing about science is that it is true whether or not you believe in it.

The difference between screwing around and science is writing it down.

Science at its best is an open-minded method of inquiry, not a belief system.

Truth in science can be defined as the working hypothesis best suited to open the way to the next better one.

Reason, observation, and experience; the holy trinity of science.

Science is simply common sense at its best, that is, rigidly accurate in observation, and merciless to fallacy in logic.

Of course, not everybody's willing to go out and do the experiments, but for the people who are willing to go out and do that, - if the experiments don't work, then it means it's not science.

Every science consists in the coordination of facts; if the different observations were entirely isolated, there would be no science.

Modern science is predicated on 'truths' verified through accurate observation and measurements of physical world phenomena.

The man of science has learned to believe in justification, not by faith, but by verification.

We must revisit the idea that science is a methodology and not an ontology.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

Science is the systematic classification of experience.

The strongest arguments prove nothing so long as the conclusions are not verified by experience. Experimental science is the queen of sciences and the goal of all speculation.

There are an infinite number of boring things to do in science.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.