Michael Faraday Quotes and Sayings - Page 1
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“I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.398, Cambridge University Press
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“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Michael Faraday (2003). “Experimental Researches In Chemistry And Physics”, p.9, CRC Press
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“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.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Michael Faraday, F. James (1999). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday, Volume 4: 1849-1855”, p.281, IET
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“The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.”
-- Michael Faraday -
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“There’s nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“But still try, for who knows what is possible?”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.476, Cambridge University Press
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“A centre of excellence is, by definition, a place where second class people may perform first class work.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Michael Faraday (1859). “Experimental Researches in Chemistry and Physics”, p.474
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“The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“I have been so electrically occupied of late that I feel as if hungry for a little chemistry: but then the conviction crosses my mind that these things hang together under one law & that the more haste we make onwards each in his own path the sooner we shall arrive, and meet each other, at that state of knowledge of natural causes from which all varieties of effects may be understood & enjoyed.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“What a weak, credulous, incredulous, unbelieving, superstitious, bold, frightened, what a ridiculous world ours is, as far as concerns the mind of man. How full of inconsistencies, contradictions and absurdities it is. I declare that taking the average of many minds that have recently come before me ... I should prefer the obedience, affections and instinct of a dog before it.”
-- 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 -
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“When I consider the multitude of associated forces which are diffused through nature - when I think of that calm balancing of their energies which enables those most powerful in themselves, most destructive to the world's creatures and economy, to dwell associated together and be made subservient to the wants of creation, I rise from the contemplation more than ever impressed with the wisdom, the beneficence, and grandeur, beyond our language to express, of the Great Disposer of us all.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“A man in twenty-four hours converts as much as seven ounces of carbon into carbonic acid; a milch cow will convert seventy ounces, and a horse seventy-nine ounces, solely by the act of respiration. That is, the horse in twenty-four hours burns seventy-nine ounces of charcoal, or carbon, in his organs of respiration to supply his natural warmth in that time ..., not in a free state, but in a state of combination.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“You can hardly imagine how I am struggling to exert my poetical ideas just now for the discovery of analogies & remote figures respecting the earth, Sun & all sorts of things-for I think it is the true way (corrected by judgement) to work out a discovery.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“As when on some secluded branch in forest far and wide sits perched an owl, who, full of self-conceit and self-created wisdom, explains, comments, condemns, ordains and order things not understood, yet full of importance still holds forth to stocks and stones around - so sits and scribbles Mike.”
-- Michael Faraday -
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“I am busy just now again on Electro-Magnetism and think I have got hold of a good thing but can't say; it may be a weed instead of a fish that after all my labour I may at last pull up.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Bence Jones, Michael Faraday (2010). “The Life and Letters of Faraday”, p.3, Cambridge University Press
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“Who would not have been laughed at if he had said in 1800 that metals could be extracted from their ores by electricity or that portraits could be drawn by chemistry.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“Chemistry is necessarily an experimental science: its conclusions are drawn from data, and its principles supported by evidence from facts.”
-- Michael Faraday -
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“Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of "I" in one word is too much.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“I cannot conceive curved lines of force without the conditions of a physical existence in that intermediate space.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Michael Faraday (1852). “On the Physical Character of the Lines of Magnetic Force: With a Plate”, p.408
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“It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labour, I at last pull up.”
-- Michael Faraday -
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“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 -
“Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : Michael Faraday, Frank A. J. L. James (1996). “The Correspondence of Michael Faraday: 1841-December 1848, letters 1334-2145”, Iet
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“All your names I and my friend approve of or nearly all as to sense & expression, but I am frightened by their length & sound when compounded. As you will see I have taken deoxide and skaiode because they agree best with my natural standard East and West. I like Anode & Cathode better as to sound, but all to whom I have shewn them have supposed at first that by Anode I meant No way.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“When a mathematician engaged in investigating physical actions and results has arrived at his own conclusions, may they not be expressed in common language as fully, clearly, and definitely as in mathematical formulae? If so, would it not be a great boon to such as well to express them so -- translating them out of their hieroglyphics that we might also work upon them by experiment?”
-- Michael Faraday -
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“I have taken your advice, and the names used are anode cathode anions cations and ions; the last I shall have but little occasion for. I had some hot objections made to them here and found myself very much in the condition of the man with his son and ***** who tried to please every body; but when I held up the shield of your authority, it was wonderful to observe how the tone of objection melted away.”
-- Michael Faraday -
“Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties.”
-- Michael FaradaySource : The Homiletic Review, April 1896.
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