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I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.

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
Unless
Feel
Feels
Numerical
Magnitude
Formulas
Satisfaction

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.
Lord Kelvin
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I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.
Lord Kelvin
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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
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
Lord Kelvin
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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
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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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
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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.
Lord Kelvin
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Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
Lord Kelvin
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You know only insofar as you can measure.
Lord Kelvin
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Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
Lord Kelvin
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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
Lord Kelvin
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To measure is to know.
Lord Kelvin
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The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.
Lord Kelvin
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[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
Lord Kelvin
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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.
Lord Kelvin