Lord Kelvin Quotes

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.

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

There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement.

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

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.

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

Heavier-than-air flying machines are impossible.

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

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

When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it.

To measure is to know.

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

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

Christianity without the cross is nothing. The cross was the fitting close of a life of rejection, scorn and defeat. But in no true sense have these things ceased or changed. Jesus is still He whom man despiseth, and the rejected of men. The world has never admired Jesus, for moral courage is yet needed in every one of its high places by him who would "confess" Christ. The "offense" of the cross, therefore, has led men in all ages to endeavor to be rid of it, and to deny that it is the power of God in the world.

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

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

In physical science a first essential step in the direction of learning any subject is to find principles of numerical reckoning and practicable methods for measuring some quality connected with it. 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; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely in your thoughts advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.

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

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.

You know only insofar as you can measure.

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

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.

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

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.

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