Quotes by Lord Kelvin

“Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.”

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

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

“At what time does the dissipation of energy begin?”

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

“The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.”

“The more thoroughly I conduct scientific research, the more I believe that science excludes atheism.”

“Do not be afraid of being free thinkers! If you think strongly enough you will be forced by science to the belief in God, which is the foundation of all religion. You will find science not antagonistic but helpful to religion.”

“...Creative Power is the only feasible answer to the origin of life from a scientific perspective.”

“Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherialization of common sense.”

All science is either Physics or stamp-collecting.

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

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

“Do not imagine that mathematics is hard and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealization of common sense.”

“The steam engine has done much more for science than science has done for the steam engine.”

“Oersted would never have made his great discovery of the action of galvanic currents on magnets had he stopped in his researches to consider in what manner they could possibly be turned to practical account; and so we would not now be able to boast of the wonders done by the electric telegraphs. Indeed, no great law in Natural Philosophy has ever been discovered for its practical implications, but the instances are innumerable of investigations apparently quite useless in this narrow sense of the word which have led to the most valuable results.”

“When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarely, in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science.”