James Clerk Maxwell Short Quotes

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An atom is a body which cannot be cut in two.

James Clerk Maxwell
[Atoms].the imperishable foundation-stones of the universe.

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

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

James Clerk Maxwell
In every experiment we have first to make our senses familiar with the phenomenon.

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

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

James Clerk Maxwell
One of the severest tests of a scientific mind is to discern the limits of the legitimate application of the scientific method.

James Clerk Maxwell
How the learned fool would wonder
Were he now to see his blunder,
When he put his reason under
The control of worldly Pride.

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
I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

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
Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.

James Clerk Maxwell
The world may be utterly crazy
And life may be labour in vain;
But I'd rather be silly than lazy,
And would not quit life for its pain.

James Clerk Maxwell
Francis Galton, whose mission it seems to be to ride other men's hobbies to death, has invented the felicitous expression 'structureless germs'

James Clerk Maxwell
The human mind is seldom satisfied, and is certainly never exercising its highest functions, when it is doing the work of a calculating machine.

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
In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.

James Clerk Maxwell
Thus number may be said to rule the whole world of quantity, and the four rules of arithmetic may be regarded as the complete equipment of the mathematician.

James Clerk Maxwell
I hope you enjoy the absence of pupils...the total oblivion of them for definite intervals is a necessary condition for doing them justice at the proper time.

James Clerk Maxwell
We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists in the transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena.

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
The chief philosophical value of physics is that it gives the mind something distinct to lay hold of, which, if you don't, Nature at once tells you you are wrong.

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
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
The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.

James Clerk Maxwell
It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...

James Clerk Maxwell
The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds.

James Clerk Maxwell