Why, sir, there is every probability that you will soon be able to tax it! Said to William Gladstone, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he asked about the practical worth of electricity.
MICHAEL FARADAYAll are sure in their days except the most wise. He is the wisest philosopher who holds his theory with some doubt.
More Michael Faraday Quotes
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Why will people go astray when they have this blessed Book to guide them?
MICHAEL FARADAY -
I am busy just now again on Electro-Magnetism and think I have got hold of a good thing but can’t say; it may be a weed instead of a fish that after all my labour I may at last pull up.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
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.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
But still try, for who knows what is possible?
MICHAEL FARADAY -
I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
I cannot conceive curved lines of force without the conditions of a physical existence in that intermediate space.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
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.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
But I must confess I am jealous of the term atom; for though it is very easy to talk of atoms, it is very difficult to form a clear idea of their nature, especially when compounded bodies are under consideration.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
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.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
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.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
Magnetic lines of force convey a far better and purer idea than the phrase magnetic current or magnetic flood: it avoids the assumption of a current or of two currents and also of fluids or a fluid, yet conveys a full and useful pictorial idea to the mind.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
Work, finish, publish.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
In place of practising wholesome self-abnegation, we ever make the wish the father to the thought: we receive as friendly that which agrees with, we resist with dislike that which opposes us; whereas the very reverse is required by every dictate of common sense.
MICHAEL FARADAY -
It is on record that when a young aspirant asked Faraday the secret of his success as a scientific investigator, he replied, ‘The secret is comprised in three words- Work, Finish, Publish.’
MICHAEL FARADAY -
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.
MICHAEL FARADAY






