Quotes by Isaac Newton
Tact is the art of making a point without an enemy.
I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.
Plato is my friend – Aristotle is my friend – but my greatest friend is truth.
- If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. -Isaac Newton
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 seashore, and diverting myself now and then in finding a smoother pebble or prettier shell than ordinary, while the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
…from the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World. Principia Mathematica.
Hypotheses non fingo. I feign no hypotheses. Principia Mathematica.
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.
Quoted in G Simmons Calculus Gems (New York 1992).
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.
Principia Mathematica.
The latest authors, like the most ancient, strove to subordinate the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics.
If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
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.
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.
Quoted in Des MacHale, Wisdom (London, 2002)
If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent. -Isaac Newton
[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.
I know not what I 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, whilest the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. (Quoted in D Brewster, Memoirs of Newton)
Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit God created everything by number, weight and measure.
I will not define time, space, place and motion, as being well known to all. (Principia Mathematica)
I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.
We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. (Principia Mathematica)
Quotes About Isaac Newton
Millions saw the apple fall, but Newton asked WHY. -Bernard Baruch
Newton has been regarded for almost 300 years as the founding examplar of modern physical science. -Alfred Rupert Hall
It is therefore no exaggeration to identify Newton as the single most important contributor to the development of modern science. -Hailey Hook Leibniz
There is no need to worry about mere size. We do not necessarily respect a fat man more than a thin man. Sir Isaac Newton was very much smaller than a hippopotamus, but we do not on that account value him less. -Bertrand Russell
In the end, Newton is as much an enigma to us as he was, no doubt, to himself.
-Robert A. Hatch
His contribution to establishing science and the scientific method as providing the best description of the material world. -Mary Bellis