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Who really said it

Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature

Written by Michael Faraday 1791–1867 · English physicist & chemist
Verified against Faraday’s own laboratory journal as printed in the 1870 Life and Letters. Free to reuse

Faraday wrote this in his own laboratory journal on 19 March 1849 (entry #10,040), first published in Henry Bence Jones’s The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II (1870), p. 248. The full sentence adds a crucial condition — “if it be consistent with the laws of nature” — that the popular short version drops.

Last verified 16 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Verified quote & credit

“Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature” Michael Faraday, laboratory journal, 19 March 1849 (The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II, 1870)

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Provenance

The source

Author
Michael Faraday
Work
The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II
Origin
Laboratory journal entry #10,040, 19 March 1849
First published
1870, ed. Henry Bence Jones (p. 248)

ALL THIS IS A DREAM. Still examine it by a few experiments. Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature; and in such things as these, experiment is the best test of such consistency.

Faraday’s private working note to himself, written while chasing a speculative idea. The famous line is the third sentence — and its force depends on the clause after the comma.

The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II (1870), on the Internet Archive

How we verified this

Public domain

The words are Faraday’s (d. 1867) and first appeared in print in The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II (1870) — both the author and the publication are long past copyright, so the text is public domain in the United States.

Fact-check

The wording trap

The attribution to Faraday is correct — but the version that travels online is usually mangled.

Faraday (mis-worded) paraphrase

The line is very often shortened to just “Nothing is too wonderful to be true,” dropping the conditional “if it be consistent with the laws of nature.” That cut reverses the meaning: Faraday was setting a limit (only what obeys natural law), not celebrating boundless wonder. Wikiquote flags the short form as a partial quotation in its sourced note.

The genuine sentence is conditional — and the condition is the whole point. See the full passage in Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II (1870), p. 248.

Context

Why it mattered

Faraday wrote these words to himself, not for publication, while pursuing a speculative idea he half-suspected was a fantasy — hence the self-rebuke “ALL THIS IS A DREAM.” The sentence is his answer to his own doubt: don’t dismiss a wonderful idea for being wonderful, but don’t trust it either — test it.

The line has since become a motto for open-minded but disciplined science, engraved above an entrance at UCLA’s Humanities Building. Its staying power comes precisely from the clause the internet keeps deleting: wonder is licensed only by consistency with nature, proven by experiment.

Nothing is too wonderful to be true — if it be consistent with the laws of nature.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Truth Knowledge

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Michael Faraday — Wikiquote (sourced)en.wikiquote.org

Lists the line in the sourced section, cited to the 1870 Life and Letters, Vol. II, p. 248.
The Life and Letters of Faraday, Vol. II (1870)archive.org

Full scan of the primary source containing the journal entry.
Notebook context of the quotefysicsfool.com

Reproduces the full passage with entry number and date and explains its setting.
Michael Faraday — Wikipediaen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the author and his work in electromagnetism and electrochemistry.

The true author

About Michael Faraday

Michael Faraday

1791–1867 · English physicist & chemist

Michael Faraday (1791–1867) was a largely self-taught English scientist whose discoveries in electromagnetic induction, electrolysis and the field concept underpin modern physics and electrical engineering. A meticulous experimentalist, he kept extensive laboratory journals in which private reflections like this one sit beside his data. The sentence captures his working creed: bold ideas are welcome, but only experiment consistent with natural law can certify them.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Primary source — Chicago

Michael Faraday, laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849), in Henry Bence Jones, ed., The Life and Letters of Faraday, vol. 2 (London: Longmans, Green, 1870), 248.

MLA (9th ed.)

Faraday, Michael. “Laboratory Journal Entry #10,040 (19 March 1849).” The Life and Letters of Faraday, vol. 2, edited by Henry Bence Jones, Longmans, Green, 1870, p. 248.

APA (7th ed.)

Faraday, M. (1870). Laboratory journal entry #10,040 (19 March 1849). In H. B. Jones (Ed.), The life and letters of Faraday (Vol. 2, p. 248). Longmans, Green.

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Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Nothing is too wonderful to be true, if it be consistent with the laws of nature’?” Last verified 16 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/nothing-is-too-wonderful-to-be-true-if-it-be-consistent

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