Michael Faraday Quotes

78 Sourced Quotes

It will be impossible for us to consider the Laws of Nature, and what they effect, unless we now and then give our sole attention, so as to obtain a clear idea upon the subject. Give me now that attention, and then I trust we shall not part without your knowing something about those Laws, and the manner in which they act.

Michael Faraday
Hypotheses, treated as mere poetic fancies in one age, scouted as scientific absurdities in the next — preparatory only to their being altogether forgotten — have often, when least expected, received confirmation from indirect channels, and, at length, become finally adopted as tenets, deducible from the sober exercise of induction.

Michael Faraday
Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

Michael Faraday
I go with Newton when he speaks of the "physical lines of gravitating force".

Michael Faraday
Facts are plentiful enough, but we know not how to class them; many are overlooked because they seem uninteresting: but remember that what led Newton to pursue and discover the law of gravity, and ultimately the laws by which worlds revolve, was - the fall of an apple.

Michael Faraday
I shall here claim, as I always have done on these occasions, the right of addressing myself to the younger members of the audience, - and for this purpose, therefore, unfitted as it may seem for an elderly infirm man to do so, I will return to second childhood and become, as it were, young again amongst the young.

Michael Faraday
I am fully aware that names are one thing and science another.

Michael Faraday
The truth of science has ever had not merely the task of evolving herself from the dull and uniform mist of ignorance, but also that of the repressing and dissolving the phantoms of the imagination.

Michael Faraday
I hardly dare venture, even in the most hypothetical form, to ask whether the Aurora Borealis and Australis may not be the discharge of electricity, thus urged towards the poles of the earth, from whence it is endeavoring to return by natural and appointed means above the earth to the equatorial regions.

Michael Faraday
All these considerations impress my mind strongly with the conviction, that insulation and ordinary conduction cannot be properly separated when we are examining into their nature; that is, into the general law or laws under which their phenomena are produced.

Michael Faraday
I propose to distinguish these bodies by calling those anions which go to the anode of the decomposing body; and those passing to the cathode, cations; and when I have occasion to speak of these together, I shall call them ions.

Michael Faraday
How wonderful it is to me the simplicity of nature when we rightly interpret her laws and how different the convictions which they produce on the mind in comparison with the uncertain conclusions which hypothesis or even theory present.

Michael Faraday
I have rather, however, been desirous of discovering new facts and new relations dependent on magneto-electric induction, than of exalting the force of those already obtained; being assured that the latter would find their full development hereafter.

Michael Faraday
All your names I and my friend approve of or nearly all as to sense & expression, but I am frightened by their length & sound when compounded. As you will see I have taken deoxide and skaiode because they agree best with my natural standard East and West. I like Anode & Cathode better as to sound, but all to whom I have shewn them have supposed at first that by Anode I meant No way.

Michael Faraday
Let us encourage ourselves by a little more imagination prior to experiment.

Michael Faraday
Although we know nothing of what an atom is, yet we cannot resist forming some idea of a small particle, which represents it to the mind... there is an immensity of facts which justify us in believing that the atoms of matter are in some way endowed or associated with electrical powers, to which they owe their most striking qualities, and amongst them their mutual chemical affinity.

Michael Faraday
So much is unknown to the wisest man, that he may often be without an answer: as frequently he is so, because the subject is in the region of hypothesis, and not of facts.

Michael Faraday
The mind of man is not confined like the matter of his body, and thus he may and does travel outwards, for wherever his sight can pierce, there his observations can penetrate.

Michael Faraday
Let us now consider, for a little while, how wonderfully we stand upon this world. Here it is we are born, bred, and live, and yet we view these things with an almost entire absence of wonder to ourselves respecting the way in which all this happens. So small, indeed, is our wonder, that we are never taken by surprise.

Michael Faraday
A truly popular lecture cannot teach, and a lecture that truly teaches cannot be popular.

Michael Faraday
As an experimentalist, I feel bound to let experiment guide me into any train of thought which it may justify; being satisfied that experiment, like analysis, must lead to strict truth if rightly interpreted; and believing also that it is in its nature far more suggestive of new trains of thought and new conditions of natural power.

Michael Faraday
What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.

Michael Faraday
Ideas and thoughts often spring up in my mind, and are again irrevocably lost for want of noting at the time.

Michael Faraday
To discover a new element is a very fine thing, but if you could decompose an element and tell us what it is made of - that would be a discovery indeed worth making.

Michael Faraday
The highest law in physical science which our faculties permit us to perceive... the "conservation of force".

Michael Faraday
I do not think that the study of natural science is so glorious a school for the mind that, with the laws impressed on all created things by the Creator, and the wonderful unity and stability of matter and the forces of matter, there cannot be a better school for the education of the mind.

Michael Faraday
The more we can enlarge the number of anomalous facts and consequences the better it will be for the subject; for they can only remain anomalies to us while we continue in error.

Michael Faraday
I can now only state facts, opinions you shall have next time.

Michael Faraday
Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it.

Michael Faraday
I do not perceive in any part of space, whether (to use the common phrase) vacant or filled with matter, anything but forces and the lines in which they are exerted.

Michael Faraday