William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin - Popular Lectures and Addresses (1889)

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When you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot measure it, when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind: it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
One thing we are sure of... and that is the reality and substantiality of the luminiferous ether.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
The scientific man sees and feels beauty as much as any mere observer — as much as any artist or painter. But he also sees something underlying that beauty; he wishes to learn something of the actions and forces producing those beautiful results.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
All that is shown to the eye; and one of the most beautiful results of mathematics is the means of showing to the eye the law of variation, however complicated, of one independent variable.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Science is bound by the everlasting law of honour, to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented to it. If a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be found, we must not involve the abnormal act of Creative Power.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
Paradoxes have no place in science. Their removal is the substitution of true for false statements and thoughts.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
These somewhat pedantic words are justifiable, because "infinitesimal satellite" is nine syllables to express three or four sentences; that is our justification.

William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin