Isaac Newton Quotes
-
To derive two or three general Principles of Motion from Phænomena, and afterwards to tell us how the Properties and Actions of all corporeal Things follow from those manifest Principles, would be a very great step in Philosophy.
-
. . . 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.
-
A cylinder of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere is of equal weight with a cylinder of water about 33 feet high.
-
As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy.
-
Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.
-
What goes up must come down.
-
We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy.
-
Do not Bodies and Light act mutually upon one another; that is to say, Bodies upon Light in emitting, reflecting, refracting and inflecting it, and Light upon Bodies for heating them, and putting their parts into a vibrating motion wherein heat consists?
-
If two angels were sent down from heaven -one to conduct an empire and the other to sweep the streets -they would feel no inclination to change employment because an angel would know that no matter what we are doing, it's an opportunity to bring joy, deepen our understanding and expand our life.
-
The alternation of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.
-
Pontus, instituted among all people, as an addition or corollary of devotion towards God, that festival days and assemblies should be celebrated to them who had contended for the faith (that is, to lie martyrs ).
-
No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible.
-
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.
-
As I am writing, another illustration of ye generation of hills proposed above comes into my mind. Milk is as uniform a liquor as ye chaos was. If beer be poured into it & ye mixture let stand till it be dry, the surface of ye curdled substance will appear as rugged & mountanous as the Earth in any place.
-
I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only a boy playing on the seashore.
-
God created everything by number, weight and measure.
-
I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.
-
God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.
-
Truth is ever to be found in the simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
-
And first I suppose that there is diffused through all places an aethereal substance capable of contraction & dilatation, strongly elastick, & in a word, much like air in all respects, but far more subtile. 2. I suppose this aether pervades all gross bodies, but yet so as to stand rarer in their pores then in free spaces, & so much ye rarer as their pores are less ... 3. I suppose ye rarer aether within bodies & ye denser without them, not to be terminated in a mathematical superficies, but to grow gradually into one another.
-
He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.
-
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
-
No old Men (excepting Dr. Wallis) love Mathematicks.
-
What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.