The initial state in most cases is bound to be highly improbable and from it the system will always rapidly approach a more probable state until it f… - Ludwig Boltzmann

I am conscious of being only an individual struggling weakly against the stream of time. But it still remains in my power to contribute in such a way that, when the theory of gases is again revived, not too much will have to be rediscovered. Thus in this book [this Part] I will now include the parts that are the most difficult and most subject to misunderstanding, and give (at least in outline) the most easily understood exposition of them.

If this theory were to hold good for all phenomena, we should be still a long way off what Faust's famous famulus [Wagner] hoped to attain, viz., to know everything. But the difficulty of enumerating all the material points of the universe, and of determining the law of mutual force for each pair, would be only a quantitative one; nature would be a difficult problem, but not a mystery for the human mind.

· ... Philosophy gets on my nerves. If we analyse the ultimate ground of everything, then everything finally falls into nothingness. But I have decided to resume my lectures again and look the Hydra of doubt straight in the eye, and it can be quite ominous [verhängnisvoll] if one values one's life. The title [Principles of Natural Philosophy] doesn't tell us anything coherent .... [it is] essentially a joke . . . . I must take care that the lecture is adequate. great difficulties; one doesn't really know what natural philosophy is ...