Isaac Newton Quotes
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Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.
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Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.
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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.
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What goes up must come down.
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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.
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It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
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This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you know, and I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer or maker; yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker! Now tell me by what sort of reasoning do you reach such an incongruous conclusion?
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Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her.
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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.
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If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.
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Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting ye Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of ye distance from ye center.
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The qualities of bodies, which admit neither intension nor remission of degrees, and which are found to belong to fill bodies within the reach of our experiments, are to be esteemed the universal qualities of all bodies whatsoever.
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If you are affronted it is better to pass it by in silence, or with a jest, though with some dishonor, than to endeavor revenge. If you can keep reason above passion, that and watchfulness will be your best defenders.
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Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.
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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 & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.
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Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation.
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God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe.
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Do not great Bodies conserve their heat the longest, their parts heating one another, and may not great dense and fix'd Bodies, when heated beyond a certain degree, emit Light so copiously, as by the Emission and Re-action of its Light, and the Reflexions and Refractions of its Rays within its Pores to grow still hotter, till it comes to a certain period of heat, such as is that of the Sun?
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If I have done the public any service, it is due to my patient thought.
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If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent.
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Is not Fire a Body heated so hot as to emit Light copiously? For what else is a red hot Iron than Fire? And what else is a burning Coal than red hot Wood?
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Thus you may multiply each stone 4 times & no more for they will then become oyles shining in ye dark and fit for magicall uses. You may ferment them with gold and silver, by keeping the stone and metal in fusion together for a day, & then project upon metalls. This is the multiplication of ye stone in vertue. To multiply it in weight ad to it of ye first Gold whether philosophic or vulgar.
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I see I have made my self a slave to Philosophy.
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The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.