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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.

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
Survival
Offshoot
Creatures
Vector
Use
Vectors
Place
Symmetrical
Good
Slightest
Never
Equations
Creature
Useless

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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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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If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
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You know only insofar as you can measure.
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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.
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[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
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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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If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.
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To measure is to know.
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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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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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When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about 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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I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.
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Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
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To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
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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.
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Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
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.
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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