Lord Kelvin Quotes

Quotes about:

• If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

  Lord Kelvin

  Measurement, Measure For Measure, Can Not

  150 Copy quote

• I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Science, Numbers

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

  171 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Science, Discovery, Measurement

  "Is Scientific Genius Extinct?" by Ross Pomeroy, bigthink.com.

  140 Copy quote

• If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Long, Atheism

  110 Copy quote

• Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

  Lord Kelvin

  Silly, Creativity, Science

  97 Copy quote

• When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.

  Lord Kelvin

  Discovery, Faces, Problem

  73 Copy quote

• Can you measure it? Can you express it in figures? Can you make a model of it? If not, your theory is apt to be based more upon imagination than upon knowledge.

  Lord Kelvin

  Imagination, Figures, Theory

  81 Copy quote

• Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.

  Lord Kelvin

  Technology, Rays, Radio

  71 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Science, Physics, Stamp Collecting

  72 Copy quote

• To measure is to know.

  Lord Kelvin

  Knows

  61 Copy quote

• When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Science, Numbers

  Popular Lectures and Addresses "Electrical Units of Measurement" (1889).

  64 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Horse, Race, Ironic

  56 Copy quote

• If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

  Lord Kelvin

  Science, Ifs

  41 Copy quote

• Christianity without the cross is nothing. The cross was the fitting close of a life of rejection, scorn and defeat. But in no true sense have these things ceased or changed. Jesus is still He whom man despiseth, and the rejected of men. The world has never admired Jesus, for moral courage is yet needed in every one of its high places by him who would "confess" Christ. The "offense" of the cross, therefore, has led men in all ages to endeavor to be rid of it, and to deny that it is the power of God in the world.

  Lord Kelvin

  Jesus, Men, Rejection

  60 Copy quote

• If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.

  Lord Kelvin

  Numbers, Form, Knows

  13 Copy quote

• Accurate and minute measurement seems to the non-scientific imagination, a less lofty and dignified work than looking for something new. But nearly all the grandest discoveries of science have been but the rewards of accurate measurement and patient long-continued labour in the minute sifting of numerical results.

  Lord Kelvin

  Hard Work, Science, Discovery

  39 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Atheism, Doe

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Influence, Force

  29 Copy quote

• Suppose that you could mark the molecules in a glass of water; then pour the contents of the glass into the ocean and stir the latter throughly so as to distribute the marked molecules uniformly throughout the seven seas; if then you took a glass of water anywhere out of the ocean, you would find in it about a hundred of your marked molecules.

  Lord Kelvin

  Ocean, Glasses, Sea

  30 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Atheism, Research

  32 Copy quote

• I have not the smallest molecule of faith in aerial navigation other than ballooning, or of the expectation of good results from any of the trials we heard of. So you will understand that I would not care to be a member of the Aeronautical Society.

  Lord Kelvin

  Future, Expectations, Molecules

  "The Experts Speak : The Definitive Compendium of Authoritative Misinformation" by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky, (p. 236), 1984.

  3 Copy quote

• Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.

  Lord Kelvin

  Common Sense, Imagine, Mathematics

  "Life of Lord Kelvin". Book by Silvanus Phillips Thompson, 1910.

  14 Copy quote

• To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.

  Lord Kelvin

  Essentials, Primaries

  "Lord Kelvin, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 1846-1899" by George F. Fitzgerald, 1899.

  3 Copy quote

• Ether is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminferous ether.

  Lord Kelvin

  Reality, Substance, Dynamics

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Lord Kelvin

  Acceptance, Science, Long

  8 Copy quote

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