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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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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
Students
Reliance
Take
Easier
Formulas
Progress
Confident
Courses
Student
Course
Symbols
Fact
Mathematical
Facts
Consider
Fatal
Reality
Physical
Formula

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.
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Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.
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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 no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.
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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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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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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
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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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You know only insofar as you can measure.
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Fourier is a mathematical poem.
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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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[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.
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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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When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.
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Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.
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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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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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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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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.
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