Michael Faraday - Science Quotes

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I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless-very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science.

Michael Faraday
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
Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.

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
It is the great beauty of our science, chemistry, that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subjects of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.

Michael Faraday
What a delight it is to think that you are quietly & philosophically at work in the pursuit of science... rather than fighting amongst the crowd of black passions & motives that seem now a days to urge men every where into action. What incredible scenes every where, what unworthy motives ruled for the moment, under high sounding phrases and at the last what disgusting revolutions.

Michael Faraday
If you would cause your view … to be acknowledged by scientific men; you would do a great service to science. If you would even get them to say yes or no to your conclusions it would help to clear the future progress. I believe some hesitate because they do not like their thoughts disturbed.

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

Michael Faraday
In the pursuit of physical science, the imagination should be taught to present the subject investigated in all possible and even impossible views.

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

Michael Faraday