Michael Faraday — "But still try, for who knows what is possible?"
But still try, for who knows what is possible?
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More from Michael Faraday
"The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge."
"I am no poet, but if you think for yourselves, as I proceed, the facts will form a poem in your minds."
"There's nothing quite as frightening as someone who knows they are right."
"A man who is certain he is right is almost sure to be wrong."
"I could trust a fact and always cross-examine an assertion."
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Understanding this quote
What it means
Keep attempting things even when the outcome is uncertain, because you cannot know what can be achieved unless you actually try. The quote pushes back against giving up before starting. It treats effort itself as the gateway to discovery, arguing that the boundaries of what is achievable are never fixed in advance and only reveal themselves to people willing to test them through action.
Relevance to Michael Faraday
Faraday embodied this ethos. Born poor, largely self-educated, and working as a bookbinder's apprentice, he had every reason to think science was closed to him. He persisted, becoming Humphry Davy's assistant and eventually discovering electromagnetic induction, the laws of electrolysis, and the Faraday effect. He ran experiment after experiment without knowing which would yield results, trusting that patient trying would eventually unlock nature's hidden mechanisms.
The era
Faraday worked in early-to-mid 1800s Britain, when electricity was a curiosity with no practical use and class barriers kept working-class men out of science. The Royal Institution and Royal Society were gentlemen's clubs. Simultaneously, the Industrial Revolution was proving that tinkering and experimentation could reshape society. Faraday's persistence-driven discoveries laid groundwork for generators, motors, and the entire electrical age that followed.
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