Isaac Newton Quotes (41 Quotes)


    What I'm trying to do with most of my work is establish this new modernism, ... If people don't walk out of theatres saying, 'Yes, something is possible,' then you've failed.

    The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.

    If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.

    It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

    I do not know what I may appear to the world but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay.


    The system of revealed truth which this Book contains is like that of the universe, concealed from common observation yet...the centuries have established its Divine origin.

    If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient observation than to any other reason.

    I was like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

    To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.

    Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, The scriptures assures us the Lord will provide.

    I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these computations, having no other business at the time.

    If I have done the public any service, it is due to patient thought.

    Hypotheses non fingo. I feign no hypotheses.

    If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.

    ... Newton was an unquestioning believer in an all-wise creator of the universe, and in his own inability like the boy on the seashore to fathom the entire ocean in all its depths. He therefore believed that there were not only many things in heaven beyond his philosophy, but plenty on earth as well, and he made it his business to understand for himself what the majority of intelligent men of his time accepted without dispute (to them it was as natural as common sense) the traditional account of the creation.

    We build too many walls and not enough bridges.

    ... from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

    The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

    The Christian ministry is the worst of all trades, but the best of all professions.

    Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.

    If I am anything, which I highly doubt, I have made myself so by hard work.

    Oh Diamond Diamond Thou little knowest the mischief done (Said to a pet dog who knocked over a candle and set fire to his papers

    To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me.

    The seed of a tree has the nature of a branch or twig or bud. It is a part of the tree, but if separated and set in the earth to be better nourished, the embryo or young tree contained in it takes root and grows into a new tree.

    To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.

    This most beautiful system The Universe could only proceed from the dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

    I shall not mingle conjectures with certainties.

    Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

    I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.

    Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night God said, Let Newton be, and all was light. Epigram on Sir Isaac Newton by Alexander Pope.

    Nature is very consonant and conformable with herself.

    To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.

    A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.

    No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.

    On how he made discoveries by always thinking unto them.... I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.

    Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.

    We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.

    His epitaph Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.

    About the Time of the End, a body of men will be raised up who will turn their attention to the Prophecies, and insist upon their literal interpretation, in the midst of much clamor and opposition.

    If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.

    If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.


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