Michael Faraday - Nature Quotes

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The most prominent requisite to a lecturer, though perhaps not really the most important, is a good delivery; for though to all true philosophers science and nature will have charms innumerable in every dress, yet I am sorry to say that the generality of mankind cannot accompany us one short hour unless the path is strewed with flowers.
Written at age 21

Michael Faraday
ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these experiment is the best test of such consistency.

Michael Faraday
I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it — and I therefore hope and am fully persuaded that you are working. Nature is our kindest friend and best critic in experimental science if we only allow her intimations to fall unbiased on our minds. Nothing is so good as an experiment which, whilst it sets an error right, gives us (as a reward for our humility in being reproved) an absolute advancement in knowledge.

Michael Faraday
But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration.

Michael Faraday
The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God.

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
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
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
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