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The vortex theory [of the atom] is only a dream. Itself unproven, it can prove nothing, and any speculations founded upon it are mere dreams about dreams.

Lord Kelvin

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Lord Kelvin
Age: 83 †
Born: 1824
Born: June 26
Died: 1907
Died: December 17
Astronomer
Mathematician
Physicist
Politician
Scientist
University Teacher
Belfast
Ireland
The Lord Kelvin
Lord Kelvin
William Thomson
William (Lord Kelvin) Thomson
Nothing
Atoms
Mere
Prove
Unproven
Dreams
Speculations
Theory
Vortex
Upon
Atom
Science
Speculation
Dream
Founded

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There cannot be a greater mistake than that of looking superciliously upon practical applications of science. The life and soul of science is its practical application.
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Questions of personal priority, however interesting they may be to the persons concerned, sink into insignificance in the prospect of any gain of deeper insight into the secrets of nature.
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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.
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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.
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I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.
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Symmetrical equations are good in their place, but ' vector ' is a useless survival, or offshoot from quaternions, and has never been of the slightest use to any creature.
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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
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If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
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Fourier is a mathematical poem.
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Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
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Vortices of pure energy can exist and, if my theories are right, can compose the bodily form of an intelligent species.
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Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.
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To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
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[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
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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.
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The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.
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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.
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You know only insofar as you can measure.
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If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
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To measure is to know.
Lord Kelvin