James Clerk Maxwell

"The true test of civilization is not the census, nor the size of cities, but the kind of man the country turns out."

"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."

"I can find time for everything in my life as long as I know what is not important."

"The office of the mathematician is only to execute the transition from the premises to the conclusion."

"In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts it contains and to the facility with which the ideas can be reduced to calculation."

"The theory of magnetism is still a matter of some uncertainty."

"The tendency to estimate the importance of a proposed creator by the complexity of the object to be created seems to have little to recommend it."

"Successful scientific work does not consist in finding new phenomena but in finding ways to prevent discovery of error."

"Do not imagine that mathematics is harsh and crabbed, and repulsive to common sense. It is quite otherwise than cold fact, it is founded on a most profound aesthetic feeling."

"The true logic for this world is the calculus of probabilities, which takes account of the magnitude of the probabilities which is all we know and can know about the future."

"There is a school of thought that holds that the whole of human civilization is merely the expression of some mechanical principle."

"I would also much like to examine the properties of matter in states in which it has been but little studied hitherto."

"My greatest desire is to know the work and the workers in every domain."

"Physical science is not only a collection of laws to be discovered and facts to be observed, but also a creation of the human mind."

"The investigation of natural phenomena should be the primary object of the natural philosopher."

"The one thing which is of the utmost importance to all thinking men is to understand the great influence which Newton's discoveries exercise over the whole field of human knowledge."

"I would say that the best thing for the improvement of truth is freedom of discussion."

"Nothing is so powerful as truth, and often nothing so strange."

"The beauty of geometry consists in the truth of its propositions and the importance of its object."

"In scientific investigations it is important to have something to do when your apparatus is not working."

"Our task is to study the invisible rays and waves that nature provides."

"Mathematics is the only science where one never knows what one is talking about nor whether what is said is true."

"The study of language is our best guide to the structure of the universe."

"I have not the slightest doubt that they have discovered some truth."

"Electricity and magnetism are two aspects of the same phenomenon."

"The phenomena of nature, as they are perceived by our senses, suggest the idea that something is going on behind the scenes."

"The way to understand natural phenomena is to use the instrument of mathematics."

"We can scarcely avoid the inference that light consists of transverse undulations of the same medium which is the cause of electric and magnetic phenomena."

"My earlier papers on this subject treated only the static case; now I wish to consider the dynamics."

"The existence of the ether has not yet been established by observation."