“The 2nd law of thermodynamics has the same degree of truth as the statement that if you throw a tumblerful of water into the sea, you cannot get the same tumblerful of water out again.”

—  James Clerk Maxwell

in a letter to Lord Rayleigh, as quoted in John William Strutt, Third Baron Rayleigh http://books.google.com/books?id=cKk5AAAAMAAJ (1924), p. 47.

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James Clerk Maxwell 27
Scottish physicist 1831–1879

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