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Michael Faraday
(22 Sep 1791 - 25 Aug 1867)
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Michael Faraday Quotes on Knowledge (13 quotes)
>> Click for 59 Science Quotes by Michael Faraday
>> Click for Michael Faraday Quotes on | Candle | Discovery | Electrolysis | Nomenclature |
>> Click for 59 Science Quotes by Michael Faraday
>> Click for Michael Faraday Quotes on | Candle | Discovery | Electrolysis | Nomenclature |
[I have a great] distaste for controversy…. I have often seen it do great harm, and yet remember few cases in natural knowledge where it has helped much either to pull down error or advance truth. Criticism, on the other hand, is of much value.
— Michael Faraday
[The object of education is] to train the mind to ascertain the sequence of a particular conclusion from certain premises, to detect a fallacy, to correct undue generalisation, to prevent the growth of mistakes in reasoning. Everything in these must depend on the spirit and the manner in which the instruction itself is conveyed and honoured. If you teach scientific knowledge without honouring scientific knowledge as it is applied, you do more harm than good. I do think that the study of natural science is so glorious a school for the mind, that with the laws impressed on all these things by the Creator, and the wonderful unity and stability of matter, and the forces of matter, there cannot be a better school for the education of the mind.
— Michael Faraday
A natural law regulates the advance of science. Where only observation can be made, the growth of knowledge creeps; where laboratory experiments can be carried on, knowledge leaps forward.
[Attributed, probably incorrectly]
[Attributed, probably incorrectly]
— Michael Faraday
I have been arranging certain experiments in reference to the notion that Gravity itself may be practically and directly related by experiment to the other powers of matter and this morning proceeded to make them. It was almost with a feeling of awe that I went to work, for if the hope should prove well founded, how great and mighty and sublime in its hitherto unchangeable character is the force I am trying to deal with, and how large may be the new domain of knowledge that may be opened up to the mind of man.
— Michael Faraday
I have been so electrically occupied of late that I feel as if hungry for a little chemistry: but then the conviction crosses my mind that these things hang together under one law & that the more haste we make onwards each in his own path the sooner we shall arrive, and meet each other, at that state of knowledge of natural causes from which all varieties of effects may be understood & enjoyed.
— Michael Faraday
I have long held an opinion, almost amounting to conviction, in common I believe with many other lovers of natural knowledge, that the various forms under which the forces of matter are made manifest have one common origin; or, in other words, are so directly related and mutually dependent, that they are convertible, as it were, one into another, and possess equivalents of power in their action.
— Michael Faraday
I hope that in due time the chemists will justify their proceedings by some large generalisations deduced from the infinity of results which they have collected. For me I am left hopelessly behind and I will acknowledge to you that through my bad memory organic chemistry is to me a sealed book. Some of those here, [August] Hoffman for instance, consider all this however as scaffolding, which will disappear when the structure is built. I hope the structure will be worthy of the labour. I should expect a better and a quicker result from the study of the powers of matter, but then I have a predilection that way and am probably prejudiced in judgment.
— Michael Faraday
I think chemistry is being frittered away by the hairsplitting of the organic chemists; we have new compounds discovered, which scarcely differ from the known ones and when discovered are valueless—very illustrations perhaps of their refinements in analysis, but very little aiding the progress of true science.
— Michael Faraday
If the term education may be understood in so large a sense as to include all that belongs to the improvement of the mind, either by the acquisition of the knowledge of others or by increase of it through its own exertions, we learn by them what is the kind of education science offers to man. It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing — not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied.
— Michael Faraday
In knowledge that man only is to be condemned and despised who is not in a state of transition.
— Michael Faraday
It is the great beauty of our science that advancement in it, whether in a degree great or small, instead of exhausting the subject of research, opens the doors to further and more abundant knowledge, overflowing with beauty and utility.
— Michael Faraday
The laws of nature, as we understand them, are the foundation of our knowledge in natural things. So much as we know of them has been developed by the successive energies of the highest intellects, exerted through many ages. After a most rigid and scrutinizing examination upon principle and trial, a definite expression has been given to them; they have become, as it were, our belief or trust. From day to day we still examine and test our expressions of them. We have no interest in their retention if erroneous. On the contrary, the greatest discovery a man could make would be to prove that one of these accepted laws was erroneous, and his greatest honour would be the discovery.
— Michael Faraday
Your remarks upon chemical notation with the variety of systems which have arisen, &c., &c., had almost stirred me up to regret publicly that such hindrances to the progress of science should exist. I cannot help thinking it a most unfortunate thing that men who as experimentalists & philosophers are the most fitted to advance the general cause of science & knowledge should by promulgation of their own theoretical views under the form of nomenclature, notation, or scale, actually retard its progress.
— Michael Faraday
See also:
- 22 Sep - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Faraday's birth.
- Michael Faraday on Pollution of the River Thames - Letter to the Editor, The Times (7 July 1885).
- Michael Faraday - Light-House Illumination - The Electric Light
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “You will soon be able to tax it!” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “You will soon be able to tax it!” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Large color picture of Michael Faraday (800 x 1000 px)
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “Always cross-question an assertion” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “Always cross-question an assertion” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “I am jealous of the term atom” - Medium image (500 x 350 px)
- Michael Faraday - context of quote “I am jealous of the term atom” - Large image (800 x 600 px)
- Michael Faraday - Scientific Worthy - article from Nature (1873)
- Michael Faraday, Christmas Lecturer - transcript of a 1940s radio talk by Charles F. Kettering.
- The Intangible in Human Progress - Michael Faraday mentioned in transcript of a 1940s radio talk by Charles F. Kettering.
- The Electric Life Of Michael Faraday, by Alan W. Hirshfeld. - book suggestion.
- Booklist for Michael Faraday.