Lord Kelvin Quotes

#1. Sir William Thomson, also known as Lord Kelvin, was an ingenious physicist and engineer, and he said that when you can measure something and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you can't measure it or express it numbers, your knowledge is lacking.

Michael Matthews

#2. When Lord Kelvin was in this country [U.S.], he said that nothing interested him so much as Mr. Hewitt's work and his vacuum lamp.

Ray Stannard Baker

#3. All of science can be divided into physics and stamp-collecting.

Lord Kelvin

#4. 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

#5. Ether is the only substance we are confident of in dynamics. One thing we are sure of and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminferous ether.

Lord Kelvin

#6. 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

#7. 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

#8. The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific inquiry hitherto entered on.

Lord Kelvin

#9. Large increases in cost with questionable increases in performance can be tolerated only in race horses and women.

Lord Kelvin

#10. Radio has no future." "X-rays are clearly a hoax". "The aeroplane is scientifically impossible.

Lord Kelvin

#11. You know only insofar as you can measure.

Lord Kelvin

#12. Quaternions came from Hamilton after his really good work had been done, and though beautifully ingenious, have been an unmixed evil to those who have touched them in any way.

Lord Kelvin

#13. The only census of the senses, so far as I am aware, that ever before made them more than five, was the Irishman's reckoning of seven senses. I presume the Irishman's seventh sense was common sense; and I believe that the possession of that virtue by my countrymen-I speak as an Irishman.

Lord Kelvin

#14. [Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.

Lord Kelvin

#15. 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

#16. There is nothing in science which teaches the origin of anything at all.

Lord Kelvin

#17. If you study science deep enough and long enough, it will force you to believe in God.

Lord Kelvin

#18. If you cannot measure it, then it is not science.

Lord Kelvin

#19. Fourier's theorem is not only one of the most beautiful results of modern analysis, but it may be said to furnish an indispensable instrument in the treatment of nearly every recondite question in modern physics.

Lord Kelvin

#20. Let nobody be afraid of true freedom of thought. Let us be free in thought and criticism; but, with freedom, we are bound to come to the conclusion that science is not antagonistic to religion, but a help to it.

Lord Kelvin

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

Lord Kelvin

#22. 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

#23. If we can't express what we know in the form of numbers, we really don't know much about it.

Lord Kelvin

#24. We all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own ... [This] may seem wild, and visionary; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific.

Lord Kelvin

#25. [Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

Lord Kelvin

#26. I have not had a moment's peace or happiness in respect to electromagnetic theory since November 28, 1846. All this time I have been liable to fits of ether dipsomania, kept away at intervals only by rigorous abstention from thought on the subject.

Lord Kelvin

#27. If you can not measure it, you can not improve it.

Lord Kelvin

#28. In science there is only physics; all the rest is stamp collecting.

Lord Kelvin

#29. The true measure of a man is what he would do if he knew he would never be caught.

Lord Kelvin

#30. The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.

Lord Kelvin

#31. When you cannot measure, your knowledge is meager and unsatisfactory.

Lord Kelvin

#32. When you are face to face with a difficulty, you are up against a discovery.

Lord Kelvin

#33. To measure is to know.

Lord Kelvin

#34. Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

Lord Kelvin

#35. The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.

Lord Kelvin

#36. Vortices of pure energy can exist and, if my theories are right, can compose the bodily form of an intelligent species.

Lord Kelvin

#37. Science is bound, by the everlasting vow of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can be fairly presented to it.

Lord Kelvin

#38. I believe that the more thoroughly science is studied, the further does it take us from anything comparable to atheism.

Lord Kelvin

#39. Fourier is a mathematical poem.

Lord Kelvin

#40. 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.

Lord Kelvin

#41. Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

Lord Kelvin

#42. To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.

Lord Kelvin

#43. Although mechanical energy is indestructible, there is a universal tendency to its dissipation, which produces throughout the system a gradual augmentation and diffusion of heat, cessation of motion and exhaustion of the potential energy of the material Universe

Lord Kelvin

#44. Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

Lord Kelvin

#45. 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

#46. 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

#47. 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

#48. At what time does the dissipation of energy begin?

Lord Kelvin

#49. The glory of science is to imagine more than we can prove.

Freeman Dyson

#50. 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