William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin - Temperature Quotes

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It is conceivable that animal life might have the attribute of using the heat of surrounding matter, at its natural temperature, as a source of energy for mechanical effect.... The influence of animal or vegetable life on matter is infinitely beyond the range of any scientific enquiry hitherto entered on. Its power of directing the motions of moving particles, in the demonstrated daily miracle of our human free-will, and in the growth of generation after generation of plants from a single seed, are infinitely different from any possible result of the fortuitous concurrence of atoms.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

It is impossible for a self-acting machine, unaided by any external agency, to convey heat from one body to another at a higher temperature.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

It is impossible by means of inanimate material agency to derive a mechanical effect from a portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest surrounding bodies.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin

It is impossible, by means of inanimate material agency, to derive mechanical effect from any portion of matter by cooling it below the temperature of the coldest of the surrounding objects.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin