“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature”

—  Michael Faraday

Laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849); published in The Life and Letters of Faraday (1870) Vol. II, edited by Henry Bence Jones https://archive.org/stream/lifelettersoffar02joneiala#page/248/mode/2up/search/wonderful,p.248.This has sometimes been quoted partially as &quot;Nothing is too wonderful to be true,&quot; and can be seen engraved above the doorway of the south entrance to the Humanities Building at UCLA in Los Angeles, California. http://lit250v.library.ucla.edu/islandora/object/edu.ucla.library.universityArchives.historicPhotographs%3A67 <br class="br">Context: ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature" by Michael Faraday?
Michael Faraday photo
Michael Faraday30
English scientist 1791–1867

Related quotes

David Pearce (philosopher) photo

“[N]othing is too terrible to be true if it is consistent with the laws of nature [...].”

David Pearce (philosopher) (1959) British transhumanist

&quot; The Pinprick Argument https://www.utilitarianism.com/pinprick-argument.html&quot;, BLTC Research, 2005

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues photo

“It is not true that equality is a law of nature. nature has made nothing equal, her sovereign law is subordination and dependence.”

Luc de Clapiers, Marquis de Vauvenargues (1715–1747) French writer, a moralist

Il est faux que l’égalité soit une loi de la nature. La nature n’a rien fait d’égal; la loi souveraine est la subordination et la dépendance.
Source: Reflections and Maxims (1746), p. 180.

Aldous Huxley photo

“Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead.”

Aldous Huxley (1894–1963) English writer

"Wordsworth in the Tropics" in Do What You Will (1929)
Source: Do What You Will: Twelve Essays
Context: Too much consistency is as bad for the mind as it is for the body. Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead. Consistent intellectualism and spirituality may be socially valuable, up to a point; but they make, gradually, for individual death.

Elisha Gray photo

“A word about the title--"Nature's Miracles." Some may claim that it is unscientific to speak of the operations of nature as "miracles." But the point of the title lies in the paradox of finding so many wonderful things--as wonderful as any miracle that was ever recorded--subservient to the rule of law. "But," you say, "a miracle does not come under any rule of law." Ah! are you sure of that? It is true that we may not understand the law that the so-called miracle comes under, but the Author of all natural law does.”

Elisha Gray (1835–1901) American electrical engineer

Familiar Talks on Science, Volume 1, 1899, p. V
(See Charles Babbage's for a similar commentary on miracles)
Nature's Miracles (1900)

Heinrich Heine photo

“True eloquence consists in saying all that is necessary, and nothing but what is necessary.”

Heinrich Heine (1797–1856) German poet, journalist, essayist, and literary critic

François de La Rochefoucauld
Misattributed

Leo Tolstoy photo

“The true meaning of Christ's teaching consists in the recognition of love as the supreme law of life, and therefore not admitting any exceptions.”

Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910) Russian writer

Friedrich Engels photo

“Freedom does not consist in any dreamt-of independence from natural laws, but in the knowledge of these laws, and in the possibility this gives of systematically making them work towards definite ends.”

Friedrich Engels (1820–1895) German social scientist, author, political theorist, and philosopher

Anti-Dühring http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/subject/quotes/index.htm (1878)

“God gives us intelligence to uncover the wonders of nature. Without the gift, nothing is possible.”

James Clavell (1921–1994) American novelist

André Delambre
The Fly (1958)

Buckminster Fuller photo

“Nature never “fails.” Nature complies with its own laws. Nature is the law. When Man lacks understanding of Nature’s laws and a Man-contrived structure buckles unexpectedly, it does not fail. It only demonstrates that Man did not understand Nature’s laws and behaviors. Nothing failed. Man’s knowledge or estimating was inadequate.”

Buckminster Fuller (1895–1983) American architect, systems theorist, author, designer, inventor and futurist

In "How Little I Know", in Saturday Review (12 Nov 1966), 152. Excerpted in Buckminster Fuller and Answar Dil, Humans in Universe (1983), 31.
"The Comprehensive Man", Ideas and Integrities: A Spontaneous Autobiographical Disclosure (1963), 75-76.
1960s

Rousas John Rushdoony photo

“The only true order is founded on Biblical Law. All law is religious in nature, and every non-Biblical law-order represents an anti-Christian religion.”

Rousas John Rushdoony (1916–2001) American theologian

Source: Writings, The Institutes of Biblical Law (1973), p. 113

Related topics