James Clerk Maxwell

The chief philosophical difficulty in the present state of electrical science is to form a distinct conception of the mode in which electrical action is propagated through space.

The value of a scientific theory depends on its power of predicting future events.

The mind can only attend to one thing at a time.

The human mind is in a state of perpetual oscillation between the actual and the possible.

The present state of science is such that we cannot hope to explain all the phenomena of nature by means of a few simple laws.

I have been thinking about the nature of things, and I have come to the conclusion that there is a good deal of it.

The only way to avoid being wrong is to say nothing.

I have been battering away at Saturn, returning to the charge every now and then. I have effected several breaches in the solid ring, and now I am splash into the fluid one, amid a clash of symbols truly astounding.

The only laws of matter are those which our minds must fabricate, and the only laws of mind are fabricated for it by matter.

I saw a rat today in the college garden, and I thought how much more pleasant it would be to be a rat than a professor.

The molecules of a gas are like angry bees in a jar, but far more mathematical.

I have been trying to invent a demon who could violate the second law of thermodynamics, but he keeps getting drunk on entropy.

I have looked into most philosophical systems and I have seen that none will work without God.

Science is incompetent to reason upon the creation of matter itself out of nothing. We have reached the utmost limit of our thinking faculties when we have admitted that because matter cannot be eternal and self-existent it must have been created.

I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable.

But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonize his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society.

At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath. And though they seem to cling together, And form 'associations' here, Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether, And through the depths of space career.

I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns.

Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.

The true Logic for this world is the Calculus of Probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probability.