Michael Faraday Quotes

Magnetism, as you recall from physics class, is a powerful force that causes certain items to be attracted to refrigerators.

Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.

You might find it hard to imagine gravity as a weak force, but consider that a small magnet can hold up a paper clip, even though the entire earth is pulling down on it.

MAGNETISM, n. Something acting upon a magnet. The two definitions immediately foregoing are condensed from the works of one thousand eminent scientists, who have illuminated the subject with a great white light, to the inexpressible advancement of human knowledge.

Theory attracts practice as the magnet attracts iron.

Magnetism is one of the Six Fundamental Forces of the Universe, with the other five being Gravity, Duct Tape, Whining, Remote Control, and The Force That Pulls Dogs Toward The Groins Of Strangers.

Iron which is brought near a spiral of copper wire, traversed by an electrical current, becomes magnetic, and then attracts other pieces of iron, or a suitably placed steel magnet.

The magnet's name the observing Grecians drew. From the magnetic region where it grew.

We studied the light source in the direction of the magnetic force, we perforated the poles of the magnet; but even in the direction of the magnetic lines of force we found that our result was confirmed.

You have to understand the nature of light.

I don't think opposites attract. I think like attracts like. So I don't think that they do attract, opposites. Only when you're talking about magnetic poles.

Are not rays of light very small bodies emitted from shining substances?

I am interested in the physicality of light itself.

Everything lives and perishes through magnetism; one thing affects another one, even at great distances, and its "congenitals" may be influenced to health and disease by the power of this sympathy, at any time, and notwithstanding the intervening space.

I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and I think rich.

I think I have kind of a natural magnetism.

Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.

Electrical science has disclosed to us the more intimate relation existing between widely different forces and phenomena and has thus led us to a more complete comprehension of Nature and its many manifestations to our senses.

Think of color, pitch, loudness, heaviness, and hotness. Each is the topic of a branch of physics.

I believe there is true expertise in some endeavors, and not in others. There is obviously no such thing as expertise in predicting the results of coin tosses, but there is expertise in predicting the behavior of lasers.

There are lines of geomagnetic force running through the Earth's crust, and most of the time, these run in opposing directions - forward and backward. In some places, they deviate and will cross each other, and when that happens, you kind of get a geomagnetic mess going in all different directions. I call these vertices.

Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.

It is characteristic of fundamental discoveries, of great achievements of the intellect, that they retain an undiminished power upon the imagination of the thinker. The memorable experiment of Faraday with a disc rotating between two poles of a magnet, which has borne such magnificent fruit, has long passed into every-day experience; yet there are certain features about this embryo of the present dynamos and motors which even today appear to us striking, and are worthy of the most careful study.

Some people reflect light, some deflect it, you by some miracle, seem to collect it.

As Attraction is stronger in small Magnets than in great ones in proportion to their Bulk, and Gravity is greater in the Surfaces of small Planets than in those of great ones in proportion to their bulk, and small Bodies are agitated much more by electric attraction than great ones; so the smallness of the Rays of Light may contribute very much to the power of the Agent by which they are refracted.