Oliver Heaviside quotes

Oliver Heaviside was an English electrical engineer, mathematician, and physicist who made significant contributions to the understanding of electromagnetism and electrical circuits. His work led to the development of transmission line theory and the invention of mathematical techniques like the Heaviside step function. He transformed the field of electrical engineering and is remembered for simplifying Maxwell’s equations. Here are 10 of his quotes:

However absurd it may seem, I do in all seriousness hereby declare that I am animated mainly by philanthropic motives. I desire to do good to my fellow creatures, even to the Cui bonos.

Oliver Heaviside

Mathematics is of two kinds, Rigorous and Physical. The former is Narrow: the latter Bold and Broad. To have to stop to formulate rigorous demonstrations would put a stop to most physico-mathematical inquiries. Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?

Oliver Heaviside

Am I to refuse to eat because I do not fully understand the mechanism of digestion?

Oliver Heaviside

So, if you are different, you had better hide it, and pretend to be solemn and wooden-headed. Until you make your fortune. For most wooden-headed people worship money; and, really, I do not see what else they can do.

Oliver Heaviside

Electric and magnetic forces. May they live for ever, and never be forgot.

Oliver Heaviside

The following story is true. There was a little boy, and his father said, "Do try to be like other people. Don't frown.” And he tried and tried, but could not. So his father beat him with a strap; and then he was eaten up by lions.

Oliver Heaviside

We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth.

Oliver Heaviside

We do not dwell in the Palace of Truth. But, as was mentioned to me not long since, "There is a time coming when all things shall be found out." I am not so sanguine myself, believing that the well in which Truth is said to reside is really a bottomless pit.

Oliver Heaviside

Electric and magnetic forces. May they live for ever, and never be forgot, if only to remind us that the science of electromagnetics, in spite of the abstract nature of its theory, involving quantities whose nature is entirely unknown at the present, is really and truly founded on the observations of real Newtonian forces, electric and magnetic respectively.

Oliver Heaviside