John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh Quotes (5 quotes)

“The work may be hard, and the discipline severe; but the interest never fails, and great is the privilege of achievement.”

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

Address to the British Association in Montreal (1884)
Context: Without encroaching upon grounds appertaining to the theologian and the philosopher, the domain of natural sciences is surely broad enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees. In other departments of human life and interest, true progress is rather an article of faith than a rational belief; but in science a retrograde movements is, from the nature of the case, almost impossible. Increasing knowledge brings with it increasing power, and great as are the triumphs of the present century, we may well believe that they are but a foretaste of what discovery and invention have yet in store for mankind. … The work may be hard, and the discipline severe; but the interest never fails, and great is the privilege of achievement.

“Without encroaching upon grounds appertaining to the theologian and the philosopher, the domain of natural sciences is surely broad enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees.”

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

Address to the British Association in Montreal (1884)
Context: Without encroaching upon grounds appertaining to the theologian and the philosopher, the domain of natural sciences is surely broad enough to satisfy the wildest ambition of its devotees. In other departments of human life and interest, true progress is rather an article of faith than a rational belief; but in science a retrograde movements is, from the nature of the case, almost impossible. Increasing knowledge brings with it increasing power, and great as are the triumphs of the present century, we may well believe that they are but a foretaste of what discovery and invention have yet in store for mankind. … The work may be hard, and the discipline severe; but the interest never fails, and great is the privilege of achievement.

“The only merit of which I personally am conscious was that of having pleased myself by my studies, and any results that may be due to my researches were owing to the fact that it has been a pleasure for me to become a physicist.”

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

On receiving the Order of Merit (1902)

“The history of this paper suggests that highly speculative investigations, especially by an unknown author, are best brought before the world through some other channel than a scientific society, which naturally hesitates to admit into its printed records matter of uncertain value. Perhaps one may go further, and say that a young author who believes himself capable of great things would usually do well to secure the favourable recognition of the scientific world by work whose scope is limited, and whose value is easily judged, before embarking upon higher flights.”

John Strutt, 3rd Baron Rayleigh

About John James Waterston's rejected paper about ideal gas kinetic energy. [Lord Rayleigh, Introduction to Waterston's Memoir "On the physics of media that are composed of free and perfectly elastic molecules in a state of motion", Philosophical Transactions, 183A, p. 1-5, Royal Society, 1892]