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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.

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
Interesting
Gain
Natural
Gains
Insignificance
Science
Deeper
Prospect
Nature
Questions
Sink
May
However
Priority
Persons
Concerned
Secrets
Personal
Priorities
Secret
Insight

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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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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The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.
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To measure is to know.
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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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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
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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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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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If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
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Simplification of modes of proof is not merely an indication of advance in our knowledge of a subject, but is also the surest guarantee of readiness for farther progress.
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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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To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
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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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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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Fourier is a mathematical poem.
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Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
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You know only insofar as you can measure.
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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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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.
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I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.
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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