James Clerk Maxwell

The world may be utterly crazy, and life may be labour in vain; But I'd rather be silly than lazy, and would not quit life for its pain.

Every existence above a certain rank has its singular points; the higher the rank the more of them. At these points, influences whose physical magnitude is too small to be taken account of by a finite being may produce results of the greatest importance.

Mathematicians my flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express.

In the very beginning of science, the parsons, who managed things then, Being handy with hammer and chisel, made gods in the likeness o' men; Till Commerce arose and at length some men of exceptional power Supplanted both demons and gods by the atoms, which last to this hour.

The human mind is seldom satisfied, and is certainly never exercising its highest functions, when it is doing the work of a calculating machine.

The opinion seems to have got abroad, that in a few years all the great physical constants will have been approximately estimated, and that the only occupation which will then be left to men of science will be to carry these measurements to another place of decimals.

The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present.

The peculiar function of the scientific man is to make discoveries, not to talk about them.