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Science Quote by Michael Faraday

"The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly"

About this Quote

Faraday’s calm isn’t a personality quirk; it’s a working method masquerading as a moral. “The important thing” sounds like a gentle aphorism, but he’s really drawing a boundary against the drama that so often clings to discovery: the hype of a breakthrough, the sting of being wrong, the noise of reputation. For a 19th-century scientist navigating public lectures, institutional politics, and the early celebrity of experimental science, taking “all things quietly” is strategic restraint. It keeps the lab from becoming theater.

The phrase “all things” is doing heavy lifting. Faraday isn’t just recommending composure when experiments fail. He’s flattening the emotional hierarchy: praise and criticism, success and setback, acclaim and obscurity should all be metabolized the same way. That’s a subtle rebuke to ego, and also a protection against it. Quiet, here, isn’t passivity; it’s control over attention. If you don’t let events yank your nervous system around, you can keep watching what matters: the apparatus, the anomaly, the result that doesn’t fit.

There’s also an ethical undertone. Faraday’s career was built on rigorous demonstration and plainspoken explanation; quiet becomes a kind of intellectual cleanliness, resisting the temptation to overclaim. In a culture where science was increasingly public-facing, his restraint reads like an argument that credibility is earned not only through brilliance, but through temperament: a refusal to let the moment outrun the evidence.

Quote Details

TopicWisdom
Source
Later attribution: The Technical Manager’s Handbook (Melvin Silverman, 2012) modern compilationISBN: 9781461541271 · ID: 5KUSBwAAQBAJ
Text match: 95.00%   Provider: Google Books
Evidence:
... The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly . ( Michael Faraday ) and remember , honesty is the best policy because there is less competition . In addition , if you tell lies , you have to have a good memory . I don't ...
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Citation Formats

APA Style (7th ed.)
Faraday, Michael. (2026, March 14). The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-important-thing-is-to-know-how-to-take-all-128041/

Chicago Style
Faraday, Michael. "The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly." FixQuotes. March 14, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-important-thing-is-to-know-how-to-take-all-128041/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"The important thing is to know how to take all things quietly." FixQuotes, 14 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/the-important-thing-is-to-know-how-to-take-all-128041/. Accessed 23 Mar. 2026.

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About the Author

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Michael Faraday (September 22, 1791 - August 25, 1867) was a Scientist from England.

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