James Clerk Maxwell — "The peculiar function of the scientific man is to make discoveries, not to talk …"

"The human mind is seldom satisfied, and is certainly never exercising its highest functions, when it is doing the work of a calculating machine."

"The only use of a knowledge of the past is to equip us for the present."

"Mathematicians my flatter themselves that they possess new ideas which mere human language is as yet unable to express."

"At quite uncertain times and places, The atoms left their heavenly path, And by fortuitous embraces, Engendered all that being hath. And though they seem to cling together, And form 'associations' her…"

"I have also a paper afloat, with an electromagnetic theory of light, which, till I am convinced to the contrary, I hold to be great guns."