Top 61 Quotes About Michael Faraday
#1. Way back in 1831, Michael Faraday, one of the founders of our modern understanding of electromagnetism, was asked by an inquiring politician about the usefulness of this newfangled "electricity" stuff. His apocryphal reply: "I know not, but I wager that one day your government will tax it".
Sean Carroll
#2. Tyndall, ... I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year.
Michael Faraday
#3. Taking him for all and all, I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen.
John Tyndall
#4. Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. [Michael Faraday] was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion.
John Tyndall
#5. ... though he [Michael Faraday] took no cities, he captivated all hearts.
John Tyndall
#6. The fact that Newton and Michael Faraday and other scientists of the past were deeply religious shows that religious skepticism is not a prejudice that governed science from the beginning, but a lesson that has been learned through centuries of experience in the study of nature.
Steven Weinberg
#7. I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
Michael Faraday
#8. The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination!
Michael Faraday
#9. Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it!
Said to William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he asked about the practical worth of electricity.
Michael Faraday
#11. You can hardly imagine how I am struggling to exert my poetical ideas just now for the discovery of analogies & remote figures respecting the earth, Sun & all sorts of things-for I think it is the true way (corrected by judgement) to work out a discovery.
Michael Faraday
#12. It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labour, I at last pull up.
Michael Faraday
#13. I cannot conceive curved lines of force without the conditions of a physical existence in that intermediate space.
Michael Faraday
#14. I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life.
Michael Faraday
#15. There's nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.
Michael Faraday
#17. It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, 'The secret is comprised in three words- Work, Finish, Publish.'
Michael Faraday
#18. It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.
Michael Faraday
#19. Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature.
Michael Faraday
#20. Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.
Michael Faraday
#21. As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around - so sits and scribbles Mike.
Michael Faraday
#22. The condition of matter I have dignified by the term Electronic, THE ELECTRONIC STATE. What do you think of that? Am I not a bold man, ignorant as I am, to coin words?
Michael Faraday
#24. When the contrary magnetic poles were on the same side, there was an effect produced on the polarized ray, and thus magnetic force and light were proved to have relation to each other ...
Michael Faraday
#25. Who would not have been laughed at if he had said in 1800 that metals could be extracted from their ores by electricity or that portraits could be drawn by chemistry.
{Commenting on Henri Becquerel's process for extracting metals by voltaic means.}
Michael Faraday
#27. When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time.
Ernest Rutherford
#28. There is no more open door by which you can enter into the study of natural philosophy than by considering the physical phenomena of a candle
Michael Faraday
#29. Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties.
Michael Faraday
#30. To him [Faraday], as to all true philosophers, the main value of a fact was its position and suggestiveness in the general sequence of scientific truth.
John Tyndall
#31. All are sure in their days except the most wise ... He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt.
Michael Faraday
#32. Shall we educate ourselves in what is known, and then casting away all we have acquired, turn to ignorance for aid to guide us among the unknown?
Michael Faraday
#33. A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong.
Michael Faraday
#34. Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.
Michael Faraday
#35. A centre of excellence is, by definition, a place where second class people may perform first class work.
Michael Faraday
#36. But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration.
Michael Faraday
#37. I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.
Michael Faraday
#38. It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.
Michael Faraday
#39. No wonder that my remembrance fails me, for I shall complete my 70 years next Sunday (the 22); - and during these 70 years I have had a happy life; which still remains happy because of hope and content.
Michael Faraday
#40. The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God.
Michael Faraday
#41. The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion,but determined to judge for himself.He should not be a respector of persons,but of things.Truth should be his primary object.
Michael Faraday
#42. Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds.
Michael Faraday
#43. The Bible, and it alone, with nothing added to it nor taken away from it by man, is the sole and sufficient guide for each individual, at all times and in all circumstances
Michael Faraday
#44. Why will people go astray when they have this blessed Book to guide them?
Michael Faraday
#45. I am busy just now again on Electro-Magnetism and think I have got hold of a good thing but can't say; it may be a weed instead of a fish that after all my labour I may at last pull up.
Michael Faraday
#47. I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.
Michael Faraday
#48. When I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a thank you offering, I thought of my first instructress.
Michael Faraday
#49. Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it.
Michael Faraday
#50. Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.
Michael Faraday
#51. Do not refer to your toy-books, and say you have seen that before. Answer me rather, if I ask you, have you understood it before?
Michael Faraday
#52. No matter what you look at, if you look at it closely enough, you are involved in the entire universe.
Michael Faraday
#53. I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes.
Michael Faraday
#54. Since peace is alone in the gift of God; and since it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope.
Michael Faraday
#55. His [Faraday's] third great discovery is the Magnetization of Light, which I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains-high, beautiful, and alone.
John Tyndall
#56. I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and I think rich.
Michael Faraday
#57. Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.
Michael Faraday
#58. Dewar's rule in his laboratory was as absolute as that of a Pharaoh, and he showed deference to no one except the ghost of Faraday whom he met occasionally all night in the gallery behind the lecture room.
Kurt Mendelssohn
#59. In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
Michael Faraday
#60. The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.
Michael Faraday
#61. The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.
Michael Faraday
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