James Clerk Maxwell Quotes

In Science, it is when we take some interest in the great discoverers and their lives that it becomes endurable, and only when we begin to trace the development of ideas that it becomes fascinating.

I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.

The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.

Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.

In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.

The only laws of matter are those that our minds must fabricate and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

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

Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state.

The chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don't, Nature at once tells you you are wrong.

Gin a body meet a body Flyin' through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Will it fly? and where?

I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.

Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.

Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.

We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.

Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.

It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.

I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds.

What's the go of that? What's the particular go of that?

Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men's hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression 'structureless germs'.

Thus number may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician.

The equations at which we arrive must be such that a person of any nation, by substituting the numerical values of the quantities as measured by his own national units, would obtain a true result.

It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...