Lord Kelvin Quotes

The triumph of science has been mainly due to its practical utility, and there has been an attempt to divorce this aspect from that of theory, thus making science more and more a technique, and less and less a doctrine as to the nature of the world. The penetration of this point of view to philosophers is very recent.

I preferred to use mathematics in some practical fashion and thought that meteorology sounded promising.

There does not exist a category of science to which one can give the name applied science. There are science and the applications of science, bound together as the fruit of the tree which bears it.

Basic research is very useful, but it should be more geared toward application than it was before.

Whatever basic science resolves, at some stage it is of use to society. The problem is we do not know when or where.

As history has shown, pure science research ultimately ends up applying to something. We just don't know it at the time.

In my lab, we are constantly asking, 'What's the utility of this pure science that we're doing? Let's nudge it a little bit in a direction where people can connect to it and have some fun and/or help some very serious problems they have.'

Though the parallel is not complete, it is safe to say that science will never touch them unaided by its practical applications. Its wonders may be catalogued for purposes of education, they may be illustrated by arresting experiments, by numbers and magnitudes which startle or fatigue the imagination but they will form no familiar portion of the intellectual furniture of ordinary men unless they be connected, however remotely, with the conduct of ordinary life.

To the engineer falls the job of clothing the bare bones of science with life, comfort, and hope.

Instrumental or mechanical science is the noblest and above all others, the most useful.

There is no such thing as a special category of science called applied science; there is science and its applications, which are related to one another as the fruit is related to the tree that has borne it.

So far I have been speaking of theoretical science, which is an attempt to understand the world. Practical science, which is an attempt to change the world, has been important from the first, and has continually increased in importance, until it has almost ousted theoretical science from men's thoughts.

Knowledge has no value except that which can be gained from its application toward some worthy end.

There are those who spend their lives studying it and those who spend their lives doing it.

I think metaphysics is good if it improves everyday life; otherwise forget it.

An ounce of practice is worth a ton of theory!

The truth is harsh." Anubis said. "Spirits come to the Hall of Judgement all the time, and they cannot let go of their lies. They deny their faults, their true feelings, their mistakes.......right up until Ammit devours their souls for eternity. It takes strength and courage to admit the truth.

Physics is the most fundamental, and least significant, of the sciences.

"There is one basis of science," says Descartes, "one test and rule of truth, namely, that whatever is clearly and distinctly conceived is true." A profound psychological mistake. It is true only of formal logic, wherein the mind never quits the sphere of its first assumptions to pass out into the sphere of real existences; no sooner does the mind pass from the internal order to the external order, than the necessity of verifying the strict correspondence between the two becomes absolute. The Ideal Test must be supplemented by the Real Test, to suit the new conditions of the problem.

However much you are read in theory, if thou hast no practice thou art ignorant

In our educational institutions applied science may almost be described as a "no-man's land."

The step between practical and theoretic science, is the step between the miner and the geologist, the apocathecary and the chemist.

The fruits of philosophy are the important thing, not the philosophy itself. When we ask the time, we don't want to know how watches are made.

My object has been, first to discover correct principles and then to suggest their practical development.

Any powerful idea is absolutely fascinating and absolutely useless until we choose to use it.