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

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.

I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds.

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.

Nothing is ever too good to be true.

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.

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.