James Clerk Maxwell Quotes

87 Sourced Quotes

All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers, so that the aim of exact science is to reduce the problems of nature to the determination of quantities by operations with numbers.

James Clerk Maxwell
Mathematicians may flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

James Clerk Maxwell
I maintain that all the evil influences that I can trace have been internal and not external, you know what I mean—that I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me, and that if I escape, it is only by God's grace helping me to get rid of myself, partially in science, more completely in society, — but not perfectly except by committing myself to God as the instrument of His will, not doubtfully, but in the certain hope that that Will will be plain enough at the proper time. Nevertheless, you see things from the outside directly, and I only by reflexion, so I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.

James Clerk Maxwell
The opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will be left to men of science will be to carry on these measurements to another place of decimals.

James Clerk Maxwell
As long as we have to deal with only two molecules, and have all the data given us, we can calculate the result of their encounter; but when we have to deal with millions of molecules, each of which has millions of encounters in a second, the complexity of the problem seems to shut out all hope of a legitimate solution.

James Clerk Maxwell
An inextensible heavy chain Lies on a smooth horizontal plane, An impulsive force is applied at A, Required the initial motion of K.

James Clerk Maxwell
Though in the course of ages catastrophes have occurred and may yet occur in the heavens, though ancient systems may be dissolved and new systems evolved out of their ruins, the molecules out of which these systems are built — the foundation-stones of the material universe — remain unbroken and unworn.

James Clerk Maxwell
Nature is a journal of science, and one of the several tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of scientific methods.

James Clerk Maxwell
Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.

James Clerk Maxwell
In the very beginning of science, the parsons, who managed things then, Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the likeness o' men; Till Commerce arose and at length some men of exceptional power Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last to this hour.

James Clerk Maxwell
Each molecule... throughout the universe bears impressed upon it the stamp of a metric system as distinctly as does the metre of the Archives at Paris, or the double royal cubit of the temple of Karnac.

James Clerk Maxwell
For the sake of these different types, scientific truth should be presented in different forms, and should be regarded as equally scientific, whether it appears in the robust form of vivid colouring of a physical illustration, or in the tenuity and paleness of a symbolical expression.

James Clerk Maxwell
It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.

James Clerk Maxwell
Some years ago I encountered a gentleman whose main object was to discover the musical relations of the number eleven. I hear on good authority that the question is not only more perplexed but more interesting than ever.

James Clerk Maxwell
March on, symbolic host! with step sublime, Up to the flaming bounds of Space and Time! There pause, until by Dickenson depicted, In two dimensions, we the form may trace Of him whose soul, too large for vulgar space, In n dimensions flourished unrestricted.

James Clerk Maxwell
At any rate the atoms are a very tough lot, and can stand a great deal of knocking about...

James Clerk Maxwell
How freely he scatters his atoms before the beginning of years; How he clothes them with force as a garment, those small incompressible spheres!

James Clerk Maxwell
One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account...

James Clerk Maxwell
Gin a body meet a body Flyin' through the air, Gin a body hit a body, Wil it fly? and where?

James Clerk Maxwell
Where molecules with fierce desires, Shiver in hot embraces The atoms clash, the spectra flash, Projected on the screen, The double D, magnesian b, And Thallium's living green.

James Clerk Maxwell
Whether this vast homogeneous expanse of isotropic matter is fitted not only to be a medium of physical interaction between distant bodies, and to fulfil other physical functions of which perhaps we have as yet no conception, but also to constitute the material organism of beings exercising functions of life and mind as high or higher than ours are at present is a question far transcending the limits of physical speculation.

James Clerk Maxwell
It is extremely improbable however that when we come to understand the true nature of electrolysis we shall retain in any form the theory of molecular charges, for then we shall have obtained a secure basis on which to form a true theory of electric currents, and so become independent of these provisional theories.

James Clerk Maxwell
[Molecular science is] one of those branches of study which deal with things invisible and imperceptible by our senses, and which cannot be subjected to direct experiment.

James Clerk Maxwell
Ethers were invented for the planets to swim in, to constitute electric atmospheres and magnetic effluvia, to convey sensations from one part of our body to another, till all space was filled several times over with ether.

James Clerk Maxwell
No theory of evolution can be formed to account for the similarity of molecules, for evolution necessarily implies continuous change, and the molecule is incapable of growth or decay, of generation or destruction.

James Clerk Maxwell
One great art in argument when you have the first move is to divide everything into that which is and that which is not in some assigned class. In this way you make it the business of the opponent to discover what other important things there may be which may be said of the subject in hand.

James Clerk Maxwell
The perusal of it [Isaac Taylor's Physical Theory of Another Life] has a tendency rather to excite speculation than to satisfy curiosity, and the author obtains the approbation of the reader, while he fails to convince him of the soundness of his views...

James Clerk Maxwell
Force, then is Force, but mark you! not a thing, Only a Vector.

James Clerk Maxwell
None of the processes of Nature, since the time when Nature began, have produced the slightest difference in the properties of any molecule. We are therefore unable to ascribe either the existence of the molecules or the identity of their properties to the operation of any of the causes which we call natural.

James Clerk Maxwell
The mathematician has, above all things, an eye for symmetry.

James Clerk Maxwell