Faraday Quotes

Nothing is too wonderful to be true if it be consistent with the laws of nature. ~ Michael Faraday

Underneath his sweetness and gentleness was the heat of a volcano. [Michael Faraday] was a man of excitable and fiery nature; but through high self-discipline he had converted the fire into a central glow and motive power of life, instead of permitting it to waste itself in useless passion. ~ John Tyndall

When Mr. William Faraday sat down to write his memoirs after fifty-eight years of blameless inactivity he found the work of inscribing the history of his life almost as tedious as living it had been, and so, possessing a natural invention coupled with a gift for locating the easier path, he began to prevaricate a little upon the second page, working his way up to downright lying on the sixth and subsequent folios. ~ Margery Allingham

If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing - not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied. ~ 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

A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong. ~ Michael Faraday

But still try for who knows what is possible! ~ Michael Faraday

I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion. ~ Michael Faraday

Loss of cell phone reception inside of a building generally indicates that the following two issues may be present: 1. High electromagnetic interference (EMI) environment from dirty electricity that is being generated by electronic products. 2. Shielding and Faraday cage effects from metalwork in the building. ~ Steven Magee

Tyndall, ... I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year. ~ Michael Faraday

Whereas, according to the declaration of that true man of the world Talleyrand, the use of language is to conceal the thoughts; this is to declare in the present instance, when I say I am not able to bear much talking, it means really, and without any mistake, or equivocation, or oblique meaning, or implication, or subterfuge, or omission, that I am not able; being at present rather weak in the head, and able to work no more. ~ Michael Faraday

Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it. ~ 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 Faraday

The Bible, and it alone, with nothing added to it nor taken away from it by man, is the sole and sufficient guide for each individual, at all times and in all circumstances ~ Michael Faraday

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly. ~ Michael Faraday

Certain opponents of Marxism dismiss it as an outworn economic dogma based upon 19th century prejudices. Marxism never was a dogma. There is no reason why its formulation in the 19th century should make it obsolete and wrong, any more than the discoveries of Gauss, Faraday and Darwin, which have passed into the body of science... The defense generally given is that the Gita and the Upanishads are Indian; that foreign ideas like Marxism are objectionable. This is generally argued in English the foreign language common to educated Indians; and by persons who live under a mode of production (the bourgeois system forcibly introduced by the foreigner into India.) The objection, therefore seems less to the foreign origin than to the ideas themselves which might endanger class privilege. Marxism is said to be based upon violence, upon the class-war in which the very best people do not believe nowadays. They might as well proclaim that meteorology encourages storms by predicting them. No Marxist work contains incitement to war and specious arguments for senseless killing remotely comparable to those in the divine Gita. ~ Damodar Dharmananda Kosambi

Michael Faraday, the son of a Yorkshire blacksmith, was born in south London in 1791. He was self-educated, leaving school at fourteen to become an apprentice bookbinder. He engineered his own lucky break into the world of professional science after attending a lecture in London by the Cornish scientist Sir Humphry Davy in 1811. Faraday sent the notes he had taken at the lecture to Davy, who was so impressed by Faraday's diligent transcription that he appointed him his scientific assistant. Faraday went on to become a giant of nineteenth-century science, widely acknowledged to have been one of the greatest experimental physicists of all time. Davy is quoted as saying that Faraday was his greatest scientific discovery. ~ Brian Cox

Is that why you're here?" Ben blurted "To glean one of us?" Scythe Faraday offered an unreadable smile. "I'm here for dinner. ~ Neal Shusterman

People feeling the need to live inside of Faraday cages is a sad reflection on modern society that humans are devolving into living inside of safe spaces. ~ Steven Magee

But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration. ~ Michael Faraday

I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes. ~ Michael Faraday

The entire electromagnetic spectrum - from radar to TV, infrared light, visible light, ultraviolet light, X-rays, microwaves, and gamma rays - is nothing but Maxwell waves, which in turn are vibrating Faraday force fields. ~ Michio Kaku

It may be a weed instead of a fish that, after all my labour, I at last pull up. ~ Michael Faraday

Speculations? I have none. I am resting on certainties. ~ Michael Faraday

Dewar's rule in his laboratory was as absolute as that of a Pharaoh, and he showed deference to no one except the ghost of Faraday whom he met occasionally all night in the gallery behind the lecture room. ~ Kurt Mendelssohn

When we consider the magnitude and extent of his discoveries and their influence on the progress of science and of industry, there is no honour too great to pay to the memory of Faraday, one of the greatest scientific discoverers of all time. ~ Ernest Rutherford

Newton had invented the calculus, which was expressed in the language of "differential equations," which describe how objects smoothly undergo infinitesimal changes in space and time. The motion of ocean waves, fluids, gases, and cannon balls could all be expressed in the language of differential equations. Maxwell set out with a clear goal, to express the revolutionary findings of Faraday and his force fields through precise differential equations.

Maxwell began with Faraday's discovery that electric fields could turn into magnetic fields and vice versa. He took Faraday's depictions of force fields and rewrote them in the precise language of differential equations, producing one of the most important series of equations in modern science. They are a series of eight fierce-looking differential equations. Every physicist and engineer in the world has to sweat over them when mastering electromagnetism in graduate school.

Next, Maxwell asked himself the fateful question: if magnetic fields can turn into electric fields and vice versa, what happens if they are constantly turning into each other in a never-ending pattern? Maxwell found that these electric-magnetic fields would create a wave, much like an ocean wave. To his astonishment, he calculated the speed of these waves and found it to be the speed of light! In 1864, upon discovering this fact, he wrote prophetically: "This velocity is so nearly that of light that it seems we have strong reason to conclu ~ Michio Kaku

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

Hey," Faraday said after a few seconds. "Did you know your clock's still ten minutes fast? ~ Victoria Laurie

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

You must not say that this cannot be, or that that is contrary to nature. You do not know what Nature is, or what she can do; and nobody knows; not even Sir Roderick Murchison, or Professor Huxley, or Mr. Darwin, or Professor Faraday, or Mr. Grove, or any other of the great men whom good boys are taught to respect. They are very wise men; and you must listen respectfully to all they say: but even if they should say, which I am sure they never would, 'That cannot exist. That is contrary to nature,' you must wait a little, and see; for perhaps even they may be wrong. ~ Charles Kingsley

Therin lies the paradox of the profession,' Faraday said. 'Those who wish to have the job should not have it...and those who would most refuse to kill are the only ones who should. ~ Neal Shusterman

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

Why will people go astray when they have this blessed Book to guide them? ~ Michael Faraday

The dance took place on a viewpoint level of Tower Four. Each hour, the whole floor would make a single revolution, so couples at tables could see both the city and the ocean. This was by far its lowest-tech feature. The Synth-Bio Club had engineered all manner of plants and animals just for the occasion: grabby little tentacular vines that climbed up the walls, twirling maple keys that danced and spun in the air like pixies and spiralled up from whatever surface they touched, butterflies that dampened signal by flapping their Faraday wings.
None of the students really noticed. They were too busy miming anal on the dance floor. ~ Madeline Ashby

Walt Whitman's proclamation that a leaf of grass was a miracle to confound all atheists did more justice to the findings of science than a positivism that stopped with the breaking down of the chemical reactions between sunlight and chlorophyll. This isolation of science from feeling, emotion, purpose, singular events, historic identity, endeared it to more limited minds. But it is not, perhaps, an accident that most of the great spirits in science, from Kepler and Newton to Faraday and Einstein, kept alive in their thought the presence of God-not as a mode of explaining events, but as a reminder of why they are ultimately as unexplainable today to an honest enquirer as they were to Job. (That thought has been admirably translated in Conrad Aiken's poetic dialogue with 'Thee.') ~ Lewis Mumford

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 ass 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

I will simply express my strong belief, that that point of self-education which consists in teaching the mind to resist its desires and inclinations, until they are proved to be right, is the most important of all, not only in things of natural philosophy, but in every department of daily life. ~ 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

Nothing is to wonderful to be true ~ Michael Faraday

Tell him solitude is creative if he is strong
and the final decisions are made in silent rooms.
Tell him to be different from other people
if it comes natural and easy being different.
Let him have lazy days seeking his deeper motives.
Let him seek deep for where he is a born natural.
Then he may understand Shakespeare
and the Wright brothers, Pasteur, Pavlov,
Michael Faraday and free imaginations
Bringing changes into a world resenting change.
He will be lonely enough
to have time for the work
he knows as his own. ~ Carl Sandburg

No wonder that my remembrance fails me, for I shall complete my 70 years next Sunday (the 22); - and during these 70 years I have had a happy life; which still remains happy because of hope and content. ~ Michael Faraday

His [Faraday's] third great discovery is the Magnetization of Light, which I should liken to the Weisshorn among mountains-high, beautiful, and alone. ~ John Tyndall

When a chess player looks at the board, he does not see a static mosaic, a 'still life', but a magnetic field of forces, charged with energy - as Faraday saw the stresses surrounding magnets and currents as curves in space; or as Van Gogh saw vortices in the skies of Provence. ~ Arthur Koestler

When I came to know Mrs. Marcet personally; how often I cast my thoughts backward, delighting to connect the past and the present; how often, when sending a paper to her as a thank you offering, I thought of my first instructress. ~ Michael Faraday

The condition of matter I have dignified by the term Electronic, THE ELECTRONIC STATE. What do you think of that? Am I not a bold man, ignorant as I am, to coin words? ~ Michael Faraday

I cannot conceive curved lines of force without the conditions of a physical existence in that intermediate space. ~ 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

Although we know nothing of what an atom is, yet we cannot resist forming some idea of a small particle, which represents it to the mind ... there is an immensity of facts which justify us in believing that the atoms of matter are in some way endowed or associated with electrical powers, to which they owe their most striking qualities, and amongst them their mutual chemical affinity. ~ Michael Faraday

There is in the chemist a form of thought by which all ideas become visible in the mind as strains of an imagined piece of music. This form of thought is developed in Faraday in the highest degree, whence it arises that to one who is not acquainted with this method of thinking, his scientific works seem barren and dry, and merely a series of researches strung together, while his oral discourse when he teaches or explains is intellectual, elegant, and of wonderful clearness. ~ Justus Von Liebig

It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, 'The secret is comprised in three words- Work, Finish, Publish.' ~ 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

Taking him for all and all, I think it will be conceded that Michael Faraday was the greatest experimental philosopher the world has ever seen. ~ John Tyndall

The world little knows how many of the thoughts and theories which have passed through the mind of a scientific investigator, have been crushed in silence and secrecy by his own severe criticism and adverse examination! ~ Michael Faraday

I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action. ~ Michael Faraday

I ... express a wish that you may, in your generation, be fit to compare to a candle; that you may, like it, shine as lights to those about you; that, in all your actions, you may justify the beauty of the taper by making your deeds honourable and effectual in the discharge of your duty to your fellow-men. ~ Michael Faraday

The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot avoid concluding that electricity also, positive as well as negative, is divided into definite elementary portions, which behave like atoms of electricity. ~ Herman Helmoholtz

Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism. ~ James Clerk Maxwell

Since peace is alone in the gift of God; and since it is He who gives it, why should we be afraid? His unspeakable gift in His beloved Son is the ground of no doubtful hope. ~ Michael Faraday

I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and I think rich. ~ Michael Faraday

And what good is a baby? ~ Michael Faraday

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

How fortunate for civilization, that Beethoven, Michelangelo, Galileo and Faraday were not required by law to attend schools where their total personalities would have been operated upon to make them learn acceptable ways of participating as members of "the group." ~ Joel Henry Hildebrand

To what part of electrical science are we not indebted to Faraday? He has increased our knowledge of the hidden and unknown to such an extent, that all subsequent writers are compelled so frequently to mention his name and quote his papers, that the very repetition becomes monotonous. [How] humiliating it may be to acknowledge so great a share of successful investigation to one man ... ~ Alfred Smee

... though he [Michael Faraday] took no cities, he captivated all hearts. ~ John Tyndall

Faraday was asked: "What is the use of this discovery?"
He answered: "What is the use of a child - it grows to be a man. ~ Alfred North Whitehead

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 Faraday

It would of course be a great step forward if we succeeded in combining the gravitational field and the electromagnetic field into a single structure. Only so could the era in theoretical physics inaugurated by Faraday and James Clerk Maxwell be brought to a satisfactory close. ~ Albert Einstein

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

The lecturer should give the audience full reason to believe that all his powers have been exerted for their pleasure and instruction. ~ Michael Faraday

Nothing is ever too good to be true. ~ Michael Faraday

With respect to Committees as you would perceive I am very jealous of their formation. I mean working committees. I think business is always better done by few than by many. I think also the working few ought not to be embaras[s]ed by the idle many and further I think the idle many ought not to be honoured by association with the working few.-I do not think that my patience has ever come nearer to an end than when compelled to hear ... long rambling malapropros enquiries of members who still have nothing in consequence to propose that shall advance the business. ~ Michael Faraday

There's nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right. ~ Michael Faraday

It may, indeed, be said that sympathy exists in all minds, as Faraday has discovered that magnetism exists in all metals; but a certain temperature is required to develop the hidden property, whether in the metal or the mind. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton