William Crookes quotes

William Crookes was an English chemist and physicist known for his discovery of the element thallium and his pioneering work on cathode rays. His experiments laid important groundwork for the development of vacuum tubes and the study of plasma. He also contributed to scientific instrument design and researched spiritual phenomena. Here are 51 of his quotes:

Which was first, Matter or Force? If we think on this question, we shall find that we are unable to conceive of matter without force, or force without matter. When God created the elements of which the earth is composed, He created certain wondrous forces, which are set free and become evident when matter acts on matter.

William Crookes

It can scarcely be denied that the fundamental phenomena which first led mankind into chemical inquiries are those of combustion.

William Crookes

All the phenomena of the universe are presumably in some way continuous, and it is unscientific to call in the aid of mysterious agencies when, with every fresh advance in knowledge, it is shown that ether vibrations have powers and attributes abundantly equal to any demand - even to the transmission of thought.

William Crookes

It is remarkable how much of the utilised information men possess has been derived from the observations of astronomers. The mechanism of the universe was known before Harvey discovered the circulation of the blood, or Watt constructed a steam engine. The astronomers seem to have been the pioneers of every branch of human knowledge. The Old and the New Testament open astronomically: "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth" (Gen., i., I). "The wise men from the east came to Jerusalem, saying, where is He that is born King of Jews? for we have seen His star in the east" (Matt., ii., 2). It must be remembered that the science of astronomy in one important respect differs from all other sciences. Astronomers are observers only - they ascertain causes by watching effects. They cannot interfere with or alter the causes in operation.

William Crookes

In every form of research there must be a beginning. We own to much that is tentative, much that may turn out erroneous. But it is thus, and thus only, that each science in turn takes its stand. I venture to assert that both in actual careful record of new and important facts, and in suggestiveness, our society's work and publications will form no unworthy preface to a profounder science both of man, of nature, and of "worlds not realized" than this planet has yet known.

William Crookes

It is equally difficult, hemmed in and bound round as we are by materialistic ideas, to think of intelligence, thought, and will existing without form or matter and untrammeled by gravitation or space.

William Crookes

I was like some two-dimensional being who might stand at the singular point of a Riemann's surface, and thus find himself in infinitesimal and inexplicable contact with a plane of existence not his own.

William Crookes

The human creature represents the most perfect thinking and acting machine yet evolved on this earth, developing through countless ages in strict harmony with the surrounding conditions of temperature, atmosphere, light, and gravitation.

William Crookes

Röntgen has familiarized us with an order of vibrations of extreme minuteness compared with the smallest waves with which we have hitherto been acquainted, and of dimensions comparable with the distances between the centers of the atoms of which the material universe is built up; and there is no reason to suppose that we have here reached the limit of frequency.

William Crookes

Most students of nature sooner or later pass through a process of writing off a large percentage of their supposed capital of knowledge as a merely illusory asset. As we trace more accurately certain familiar sequences of phenomena we begin to realize how closely these sequences, or laws, as we call them, are hemmed round by still other laws of which we can form no notion.

William Crookes

Here we use the vibrations of the material molecules of the atmosphere to transmit intelligence from one brain to another.

William Crookes

Steadily, unflinchingly, we strive to pierce the inmost heart of Nature, from what she is to reconstruct what she has been, and to prophesy what she yet shall be. Veil after veil we have lifted, and her face grows more beautiful, august, and wonderful with every barrier that is withdrawn.

William Crookes

I have nothing to retract. I adhere to my already published statements.

William Crookes

A formidable range of phenomena must be scientifically sifted before we effectually grasp a faculty so strange, so bewildering, and for ages so inscrutable as the direct action of mind on mind.

William Crookes

Telepathy, the transmission of thought and images directly from one mind to another without the agency of the recognized organs of sense, is a conception new and strange to science.

William Crookes

But difficulties are things to be overcome even in the elusory branch of research known as experimental psychology.

William Crookes

Let it be assumed that these rays, or rays even of higher frequency, can pass into the brain and act on some nervous center there.

William Crookes

A view of the constitution of matter which recommended itself to Faraday as preferable to the one ordinarily held appears to me to be exactly the view I endeavor to picture as the constitution of spiritual beings. Centers of intellect, will, energy, and power, each mutually penetrable, while at the same time permeating what we call space, but each center retaining its own individuality, persistence of self, and memory.

William Crookes

Is it inconceivable that intense thought concentrated toward a sensitive with whom the thinker is in close sympathy may induce a telepathic chain of brain waves, along which the message of thought can go straight to its goal without loss of energy due to distance?

William Crookes

It has been said that "Nothing worth the proving can be proved, nor yet disproved."

William Crookes

It is curious that the popular conceptions of evil and malignant beings are of the type that would be produced by increased gravitation.

William Crookes

Popular imagination presupposes spiritual beings to be utterly independent of gravitation, while retaining shapes and proportions which gravitation originally determined, and only gravitation seems likely to maintain. When and if spiritual beings make themselves visible either to our bodily eyes or to our inward vision, their object would be thwarted were they not to appear in a recognizable form; so that their appearance would take the shape of the body and clothing to which we have been accustomed.

William Crookes