Lord Kelvin Quotes

Quotes about:

• 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).

  161 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Measurement, Measure For Measure, Can Not

  144 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.

  135 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Long, Atheism

  92 Copy quote

• Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

  Lord Kelvin

  Silly, Creativity, Science

  93 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

  77 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Science, Physics, Stamp Collecting

  65 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Discovery, Faces, Problem

  67 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Technology, Rays, Radio

  68 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).

  59 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

  56 Copy quote

• To measure is to know.

  Lord Kelvin

  Knows

  55 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

  52 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Science, Ifs

  36 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.

  10 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

  36 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

  5 Copy quote

• Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.

  Lord Kelvin

  Strong, Lying, Intelligent

  7 Copy quote

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

  Lord Kelvin

  Believe, Atheism, Research

  25 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

  24 Copy quote

• Nothing can be more fatal to progress than a too confident reliance on mathematical symbols; for the student is only too apt to take the easier course, and consider the formula not the fact as the physical reality.

  Lord Kelvin

  Reality, Progress, Facts

  "Treatise on Natural Philosophy". Book by Lord Kelvin and Peter Guthrie Tait, quod.lib.umich.edu. 1867.

  17 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

  27 Copy quote

• I need scarcely say that the beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life.

  Lord Kelvin

  Sound, Needs, Maintenance

  "The Life of Lord Kelvin" by Silvanus Phillips, Volume 2, (p. 866), 2005.

  19 Copy quote

• Fourier is a mathematical poem.

  Lord Kelvin

  Math, Poetry, Fourier

  48 Copy quote

• It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect . . . .The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

  Lord Kelvin

  Moving, Animal, Vegetables

  "The Life of Lord Kelvin, Volume 2" by Silvanus Phillips, (2005 edition, p. 1093), 1910.

  7 Copy quote

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