Lord Kelvin Quotations

Mathematics is the only good metaphysics.

We all confidently believe that there are at present, and have been from time immemorial, many worlds of life besides our own. . . . [This] may seem wild, and visionary; all I maintain is that it is not unscientific.

Mathematics is the only true metaphysics.

Do not imagine that mathematics is harsh and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is merely the etherealisation of common sense.

Questions of personal priority, however interesting they may be to the persons concerned, sink into insignificance in the prospect of any gain of deeper insight into the secrets of nature.

Scientific wealth tends to accumulate according to the law of compound interest. Every addition to knowledge of the properties of matter supplies the physical scientist with new instrumental means for discovering and interpreting phenomena of nature, which in their turn afford foundations of fresh generalisations, bringing gains of permanent value into the great storehouse of natural philosophy.

[Of the ether] it is no greater mystery at all events than the shoemakers' wax.

I have not had a moment's peace or happiness in respect to electromagnetic theory since November 28, 1846. All this time I have been liable to fits of ether dipsomania, kept away at intervals only by rigorous abstention from thought on the subject.

[Referring to Fourier's mathematical theory of the conduction of heat] ... Fourier's great mathematical poem ...

The life and soul of science is its practical application, and just as the great advances in mathematics have been made through the desire of discovering the solution of problems which were of a highly practical kind in mathematical science, so in physical science many of the greatest advances that have been made from the beginning of the world to the present time have been made in the earnest desire to turn the knowledge of the properties of matter to some purpose useful to mankind.