42 Quotes by James Clerk Maxwell

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

The true logic of this world is in the calculus of probabilities.

In Science, it is when we take some interest in the great discoverers and their lives that it becomes endurable, and only when we begin to trace the development of ideas that it becomes fascinating.

Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.

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 student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.

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.

Faraday is, and must always remain, the father of that enlarged science of electromagnetism.

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.