I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in numbers, your knowledge is of a meagre and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your thoughts, advanced to the stage of science, whatever the matter may be.
Quotations by:
Kelvin (Lord)
To live among friends is the primary essential of happiness.
William Thomson, Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) Scottish physicist
Lord Kelvin’s Replies to Addresses given on the Celebration of the Jubilee of his Professorship (15-17 Jun 1896)
(Source)
Quoted in G. Fitzgerald, Lord Kelvin, Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University of Glasgow 1846-1899 (1899)