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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELLColour 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.
More James Clerk Maxwell Quotes
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But, we venture to say, they will find themselves very much enlightened during the process, and will even be doubtful whether the ideas as expressed in symbols had ever quite found their way out of the equations into their minds.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
An Experiment, like every other event which takes place, is a natural phenomenon; but in a Scientific Experiment the circumstances are so arranged that the relations between a particular set of phenomena may be studied to the best advantage.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
Thoroughly conscious ignorance is the prelude to every real advance in science.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
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.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
Ampere was the Newton of Electricity.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
One of the chief peculiarities of this treatise is the doctrine that the true electric current, on which the electromagnetic phenomena depend, is not the same thing as the current of conduction, but that the time-variation of the electric displacement must [also] be taken into account.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath. And though they seem to cling together, And form ‘associations’ here, Yet, soon or late, they burst their tether, And through the depths of space career.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
It is a universal condition of the enjoyable that the mind must believe in the existence of a law, and yet have a mystery to move about in.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
In the heavens we discover [stars] by their light, and by their light alone … the sole evidence of the existence of these distant worlds … that each of them is built up of molecules of the same kinds we find on earth.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
The popularisation of scientific doctrines is producing as great an alteration in the mental state of society as the material applications of science are effecting in its outward life.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
The University of Cambridge, in accordance with that law of its evolution, by which, while maintaining the strictest continuity between the successive phases of its history, it adapts itself with more or less promptness to the requirements of the times, has lately instituted a course of Experimental Physics.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
In speaking of the Energy of the field, however, I wish to be understood literally. All energy is the same as mechanical energy, whether it exists in the form of motion or in that of elasticity, or in any other form. The energy in electromagnetic phenomena is mechanical energy.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
I have the capacity of being more wicked than any example that man could set me.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
All the mathematical sciences are founded on relations between physical laws and laws of numbers.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL -
The experimental verification of the mathematical results therefore is no evidence for or against the peculiar doctrines of this theory.
JAMES CLERK MAXWELL






