“Physicist is both to my mouth and ears so awkward that I think I shall never use it. The equivalent of three separate sounds of “I” in one word is too much.”

It is right that we should stand by and act on our principles; but not right to hold them in obstinate blindness, or retain them when proved to be erroneous.

The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly.

Lectures which really teach will never be popular; lectures which are popular will never really teach.

I have far more confidence in the one man who works mentally and bodily at a matter than in the six who merely talk about it.

When the contrary magnetic poles were on the same side, there was an effect produced on the polarized ray, and thus magnetic force and light were proved to have relation to each other.

Work, finish, publish.

I propose to distinguish these bodies by calling those anions which go to the anode of the decomposing body; and those passing to the cathode, cations; and when I have occasion to speak of these together, I shall call them ions.

You can hardly imagine how I am struggling to exert my poetical ideas just now for the discovery of analogies and remote figures respecting the earth, sun, and all sorts of things — for I think that is the true way (corrected by judgment) to work out a discovery.

The book of nature which we have to read is written by the finger of God.

I could trust a fact and always cross-question an assertion.

Water is to me, I confess, a phenomenon which continually awakens new feelings of wonder as often as I view it.

Tyndall, … I must remain plain Michael Faraday to the last; and let me now tell you, that if accepted the honour which the Royal Society desires to confer upon me, I would not answer for the integrity of my intellect for a single year.

I can at any moment convert my time into money, but I do not require more of the latter than is sufficient for necessary purposes.

The philosopher should be a man willing to listen to every suggestion,but determined to judge for himself.He should not be a respector of persons,but of things.Truth should be his primary object.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

I happen to have discovered a direct relation between magnetism and light, also electricity and light, and the field it opens is so large and I think rich.

The balance of evidence both from the cell-free system and from the study of mutation, suggests that this does not occur at random, and that triplets coding the same amino acid may well be rather similar.

Science and everyday life cannot and should not be separated.

Those traits that pass into hybrid association entirely or almost entirely unchanged, thus themselves representing the traits of the hybrid, are termed dominating and those that become latent in the association, recessive.

One part of the science of living is to learn just what our own responsibility is, and to let other people’s alone.

Perhaps it would be better for science, that all criticism should be avowed.

I continue to form a column. If the column contains about twenty of these couples of metal, it will be capable of giving to the fingers several small shocks.

A typical triumph of modern science to find the only part of Randolph that was not malignant and remove it.

The theory of evolution, like the theory of gravity, is a scientific fact.