27 quotes
I hope that you will not tell me you have little fault to find with me, without finding that little and communicating it.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
In every branch of knowledge the progress is proportional to the amount of facts on which to build, and therefore to the facility of obtaining data.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
Heat may be generated and destroyed by certain processes, and this shows that heat is not a substance.
Theory of Heat (1871)
But we have no right to think thus of the unsearchable riches of creation, or of the untried fertility of those fresh minds into which these riches will continue to be poured.
To prove the laws of motion by the law of gravitation would be an inversion of scientific order. We might as well prove the law of addition of numbers by the differential calculus.
Aye, I suppose I could stay up that late.
This identification of extension with substance runs through the whole of Descartes's works, and it forms one of the ultimate foundations of the system of Spinoza.
The equations at which we arrive must be such that a person of any nation, by substituting the numerical values of the quantities as measured by his own national units, would obtain a true result.
Happiness and Misery must inevitably increase with increasing Power and Knowledge … the translation from the one course to the other is essentially miraculous, while the progress is natural.
Colour as perceived by us is a function of three independent variables at least three are I think sufficient, but time will show if I thrive.
The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.
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.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
It is of great advantage to the student of any subject to read the original memoirs on that subject, for science is always most completely assimilated when it is in the nascent state...
A Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism (1873)
The mathematical difficulties of the theory of rotation arise chiefly from the want of geometrical illustrations and sensible images, by which we might fix the results of analysis in our minds.
How the learned fool would wonder
Were he now to see his blunder,
When he put his reason under
The control of worldly Pride.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
We may find illustrations of the highest doctrines of science in games and gymnastics, in travelling by land and by water, in storms of the air and of the sea, and wherever there is matter in motion.
The agreement of the results seems to show that light and magnetism are affections of the same substance, and that light is an electromagnetic disturbance propagated through the field according to electromagnetic laws.
A Dynamical Theory of the Electromagnetic Field (1864)
Ask no more, then, "what is best,
How shall those you love be blest,"
Ask at once eternal Rest,
Peace and assurance giving.
Rest of Life and not of death,
Rest in Love and Hope and Faith,
Til the God who gives their breath
Calls them to rest from living.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
But listen, what harmony holy
Is mingling its notes with our own!
The discord is vanishing slowly,
And melts in that dominant tone.
And they that have heard it can never
Return to confusion again,
Their voices are music for ever,
And join in the mystical strain.
The Life of James Clerk Maxwell (1882)
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.