Quote

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

Lord Kelvin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Metaphysics
Mathematics
True

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

Image
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
Image
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.
Lord Kelvin
Image
The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.
Lord Kelvin
Image
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
Image
If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
Lord Kelvin
Image
When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.
Lord Kelvin
Image
To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
Lord Kelvin
Image
You know only insofar as you can measure.
Lord Kelvin
Image
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
Image
I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.
Lord Kelvin
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.
Lord Kelvin
Image
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
Image
[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
Lord Kelvin
Image
If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin
Image
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
Image
When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
Lord Kelvin
Image
Fourier is a mathematical poem.
Lord Kelvin