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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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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
Figures
Based
Theory
Imagination
Knowledge
Model
Upon
Measure
Make
Express
Models

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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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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If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
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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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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
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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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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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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.
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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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The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I do not see how I can put it in words.
Lord Kelvin
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The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes 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.
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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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Fourier is a mathematical poem.
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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To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
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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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
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To measure is to know.
Lord Kelvin