Michael 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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 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

[Bill] Clinton was a pretty good president for a Republican. ~ Michael Moore

I often wonder why people remake movies. Is there just a lack of imagination out there that they can't come up with an original idea? ~ Michael Beck

I've never much been interested in doing films that no one gets to see. ~ Michael Apted

The rain comes through their thin cotton clothes against their muscles. Alice sweeps back her wet hair. A sudden flinging of sheet lighting and Clara sees Alice subliminal in movement almost rising up into the air, shirt removed, so her body can meet the rain, the rest of her ascent lost to darkness till the next brief flutter of light when they hold a birch tree in their clasped hands, lean back and swing within the rain.
They crawl delirious together in the blackness. There is no moon. There is the moon flower in its small power of accuracy, like a compass, pointing to where the moon is, so they can bay towards its absence. ~ Michael Ondaatje

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A's play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover's special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen's departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at leas ~ Michael Chabon

If you don't believe there's some organising principle, or somebody up in the sky pulling the strings, then it can be very stressful. And nature itself is very arbitrary - it's not malevolent or benevolent; it doesn't even know we're here. ~ Michael Shannon

But I think the one thing that I can say about us is that we're very consistent about certain things and part of that is our desire to do the very best work that we can and not rest on our laurels, or not allow formula to come into what we do. ~ Michael Stipe

His life was dedicated to the fine art of tearing down and building anew. ~ Michael Lewis

There are ways you can find people to help you market your company on the Internet. If you have the right people helping you, you can get the word out. Newspaper and TV ads are expensive. If you can get the word out through social media, that's a big advantage. ~ Michael Franzese

A lot of people on Capitol Hill don't want to talk to me. ~ Michael Moore

The proverb, "Where there's a will.." sums it up for a writer who had just started in his writing life; for himself, the fictional characters and the audience of his works. It's a trinity of perspectives; one of his struggle, another of the story character which he writes about and the last one of the reader's expectation of his protagonists. ~ Lucas Michael

My parents listened to a lot of music when I was really little. They used to listen to people like Michael Jackson and Stevie Wonder and I used to be really into that. ~ Conor Maynard

I learned always to avoid glorious campaigns - everyone is more likely to die in glorious campaigns. ~ Michael Cisco

Mostly I take photographs in times of research. Whores' Glory was shot in 30 days, 10 days for each segment, but the research for each part lasted a couple of months. ~ Michael Glawogger

Everything in 'The Tudors' is initially based on my historical research, and the fact is that the most unlikely scenes were the ones which were probably most based on reality. I prefer to be as real as possible, and there is so much of that story that you just can't make up. ~ Michael Hirst

That's not the reason I didn't tell you," Royce snapped.
"You just said it was!"
"I know I did!"
"So you're lying to me again?"
"Call me a liar one more time - "
"And what? What? You going to fight me?" "It's dark in here. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

The goal for me has always been to learn how to express myself in radio and to have fun doing it and work with whatever contingencies arise. ~ Michael Feldman

It seems a lot of straight men need a word coach or a lawyer when it comes to discussing 'Sex and the City.' ~ Michael Patrick King

I just want to know if I'm truly not in the NFL, it's because of talent. Let it be because of my talents. But you've got to prove that I can't play this game. If you look at the film, clearly I can. So, I'll leave it at that. ~ Michael Sam

Serious is when they tell you, 'You've got cancer.' Cancer is serious, but then the rest of it is not. ~ Michael Douglas

No matter what you do, give it everything you have. Be the best, not the second best. ~ Michael Jackson

I've always had an eye for what looks good on a man. But I've not always found it easy to find clothes that look good on me. ~ Michael Sheen

He held up one finger. "I thought it wasn't loaded" Shane said. Second finger. "Hand me a match so I can check the gas tank." Third finger. "Killed over ice cream. Basically, any death that requires me to be stupid first."
Michael shook his head. "So what's on your good list?"
"Oh you know. Hero stuff that gets me rerun on CNN, Like I died saving a busload of supermodels" Claire smacked his arm. "Ow! Saving them! What did you think I meant? ~ Rachel Caine

By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. ~ Michael Behe

My mother is my root, my foundation. She planted the seed that I base my life on, and that is the belief that the ability to achieve starts in your mind. ~ Michael Jordan

MEANING-MAKING The Human Adventure "Nothing means anything on its own. Meaning comes not from seeing or even observation alone, for there is no 'alone' in this sort. Neither is meaning lying around in nature waiting to be scooped up by the senses; rather it is constructed. 'Constructed' in this context means produced in acts of interpretation." Humberto R. Maturana "What an organism does is organize, and what a human organism organizes is meaning. It is not that a person makes meaning as much as that the activity of being a person is the activity of meaning-making. There is thus no feeling, no experience, no thought, no perception, independent of a meaning-making context in which it becomes a feeling, an experience, a thought, a perception, because we are the meaning-making context. ~ L. Michael Hall

Talk is cheap. Any true value comes from actions taken after the meeting. ~ J. Michael Gospe Jr.

If we cannot win, we can at least deprive them of the victory. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

I sit waiting for things that I can't refuse. ~ Michael Caine

Home economics - kids in school used to be taught how to shop, how to cook from scratch, how to be in control of their diets. Doesn't happen anymore. ~ Michael Moss

We have enough space in our hearts, but we are afraid of allowing animals shit and mess around with our feelings. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Only love could pick a nested pair of steel Bramah locks. ~ Michael Chabon

I don't believe in that kind of American John Wayne individualism where people pull themselves up by their bootstraps. Someone changed your diapers. And if that's the case, you ain't self-made. ~ Michael Eric Dyson

Music is so strong, so powerful, and such an amazing tool and bands that don't take that into account and feel that they are not responsible for their message is a bunch of baloney. ~ Michael Sweet