Hermann von Helmholtz Quotes

27 quotes in 585 categories

• The total quantity of all the forces capable of work in the whole universe remains eternal and unchanged throughout all their changes. All change in…
• Isolated facts and experiments have in themselves no value, however great their number may be. They only become valuable in a theoretical or practical point…
• Whoever, in the pursuit of science, seeks after immediate practical utility, may generally rest assured that he will seek in vain.
• A metaphysical conclusion is either a false conclusion or a concealed experimental conclusion.
• When young Galileo, then a student at Pisa, noticed one day during divine service a chandelier swinging backwards and forwards, and convinced himself, by counting…
• Black is real sensation, even if it is produced by entire absence of light. The sensation of black is distinctly different from the lack of…
• Not that I wish by any means to deny, that the mental life of individuals and peoples is also in conformity with law, as is…
• I then endeavoured to show that it is more especially in the thorough conformity with law which natural phenomena and natural products exhibit, and in…
• Each individual fact, taken by itself, can indeed arouse our curiosity or our astonishment, or be useful to us in its practical applications.
• The smallest quantity of alcohol scares away novel ideas.
• I think the facts leave no doubt that the very mightiest among the chemical forces are of electric origin. The atoms cling to their electric…
• The most startling result of Faraday's Law is perhaps this. If we accept the hypothesis that the elementary substances are composed of atoms, we cannot…
• Just as a physicist has to examine the telescope and galvanometer with which he is working; has to get a clear conception of what he…
• During the first half of the present century we had an Alexander von Humboldt, who was able to scan the scientific knowledge of his time…
• All that science can achieve is a perfect knowledge and a perfect understanding of the action of natural and moral forces.
• Windmills, which are used in the great plains of Holland and North Germany to supply the want of falling water, afford another instance of the…
• A moving body whose motion was not retarded by any resisting force would continue to move to all eternity.
• A raised weight can produce work, but in doing so it must necessarily sink from its height, and, when it has fallen as deep as…
• But heat can also be produced by the friction of liquids, in which there could be no question of changes in structure, or of the…
• Heat can also be produced by the impact of imperfectly elastic bodies as well as by friction. This is the case, for instance, when we…

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