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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
Models
Figures
Based
Theory
Imagination
Knowledge
Model
Upon
Measure
Make
Express

More quotes by Lord Kelvin

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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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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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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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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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Overwhelmingly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us... the atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.
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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If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.
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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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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When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.
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.
Lord Kelvin
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If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.
Lord Kelvin
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To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
Lord Kelvin
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I have no satisfaction in formulas unless I feel their numerical magnitude.
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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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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To measure is to know.
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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If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.
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.
Lord Kelvin