Isaac Newton Quotes (1643-1727)

“You sometimes speak of Gravity as essential and inherent to Matter. Pray do not ascribe that Notion to me; for the Cause of Gravity is what I do not pretend to know, and therefore would take more Time to consider it.”

“And so, supposing that light impinging on a refracting or reflecting ethereal superficies puts it into a vibrating motion, that physical superficies being by the perpetual applause of rays always kept in a vibrating motion, and the ether therein continually expanded and compressed by turns, if a ray of light impinge on it when it is much compressed, I suppose it is then too dense and stiff to let the ray through, and so reflects it; but the rays that impinge on it at other times, when it is either expanded by the interval between two vibrations or not too much compressed and condensed, go through and are refracted.”

“And thus much concerning God; to discourse of whom from the appearances of things, does certainly belong to Natural Philosophy.”

“Daniel was in the greatest credit amongst the Jews, till the reign of the Roman Emperor Hadrian. And to reject his prophecies, is to reject the Christian religion. For this religion is founded upon his prophecy concerning the Messiah.”

“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all, and on account of His dominion He is wont to be called Lord God, Universal Ruler.”

“Who is a liar, saith John, but he that denyeth that Jesus is the Christ? He is Antichrist that denyeth the Father & the Son. And we are authorized also to call him God: for the name of God is in him. Exod. 23.21. And we must believe also that by his incarnation of the Virgin he came in the flesh not in appearance only but really & truly , being in all things made like unto his brethren (Heb. 2 17) for which reason he is called also the son of man.”

“The investigation of difficult things by the method of analysis ought ever to precede the method of composition.”

“I fear what I have said of Infinities, will seem obscure to you; but it is enough if you understand, that Infinities when considered absolutely without any Restriction or Limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any Proportion one to another, and therefore the Principle that all Infinities are equal, is a precarious one.”

“I consider time as flowing or increasing by continual flux & other quantities as increasing continually in time & from ye fluxion of time I give the name of fluxions to the velocitys wth wch all other quantities increase. ...I expose time by any quantity flowing uniformly and represent its fluxion by an unit, & the fluxions of other quantities I represent by any other fit symbols... This Method is derived immediately from Nature her self.”

“I have that honour for him as to believe that he wrote good sense; and therefore take that sense to be his which is the best.”

“Amicus Plato—amicus Aristotles—magis amica veritas(Plato is my friend—Aristotle is my friend—but my greatest friend is truth.)”

“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.”

“I had a hint of this method [of fluxions] from Fermat's way of drawing tangents, and by applying it to abstract equations, directly and invertedly, I made it general.”

“The case of the sixth Corrollary obtains in the celestial bodies (as Sir Christopher Wren, Dr. Hooke, and Dr. Halley have severally observed); and therefore in what follows, I intend to treat more at large of those things which relate to centripetal force, decreasing as the squares of the distances from the centres [inverse square law].”

“In letters which went between me and that most excellent geometer. G.G. Leibniz, ten years ago, when I signified that I was in the knowledge of a method of determining maxima and minima, of drawing tangents, and the like, and when I concealed it in transposed letters involving this sentence (Data æquatione, etc., above cited) that most distinguished man wrote back that he had also fallen upon a method of the same kind, and communicated his method, which hardly differed from mine, except in his forms of words and symbols.”

“It was the ancient opinion of not a few in the earliest ages of philosophy, That the fixed stars stood immovable in the highest parts of the world; that under the Fixed Stars the Planets were carried about the Sun; that the Earth, as one of the Planets, described the annual course about the Sun, while a diurnal motion it was in the mean time revolved about its own axe; and that the Sun, as the common fire which served to warm the whole, was fixed in the center of the Universe. This was the philosophy taught of old by Philolaus, Aristarchus of Samos, Plato in his riper years, and the whole sect of the Pythagoreans. And this was the judgment of Anaximander, more ancient than any of them, and of that wise king of the Romans, Numa Pompilius; who, as a symbol of the figure of the World with the Sun in the center, erected a temple in honour of Vesta, of a round form, and ordained perpetual fire to be kept in the middle of it.”

“Newton and Locke are examples of the deep sagacity which may be acquired by long habits of thinking and study.”

“According to Sir Isaac Newton's Calculations, the last Comet that made its Appearance in 1680, imbib'd so much Heat by its Approaches to the Sun, that it would have been two thousand times hotter than red hot Iron, had it been a Globe of that Metal; and that supposing it as big as the Earth, and at the same Distance from the Sun, it would be fifty thousand Years in cooling, before it recovered its natural Temper. In the like manner, if an Englishman considers the great Ferment into which our Political World is thrown at present, and how intensely it is heated in all its Parts, he cannot suppose that it will cool again in less than three hundred Years. In such a Tract of Time it is possible that the Heats of the present Age may be extinguished, and our several Classes of great Men represented under their proper Characters. Some eminent Historian may then probably arise that will not write recentibus odiis (as Tacitus expresses it) with the Passions and Prejudices of a contemporary Author, but make an impartial Distribution of Fame among the Great Men of the present Age.”

“Newton's own motto, "hypotheses non fingo" was, in a sense, disregarded by Newton himself: he rejected hypotheses only where they violated his own "regula philosophandi", that is to say, his principle of their strict parsimony. In terms of present-day methodology, we reject hypotheses as scientifically meaningless if they are incapable even of indirect test; and we reject them as superfluous or as implausible if they are too complex and artificial to conform with well established canons of inductive probability. But freedom of scientific theorizing must be preserved wherever the conditions of meaningfulness and of economy appear to be satisfied.”

“Kepler succeeded in showing that the planets move along elliptic paths and that the sun lies at a focus of each of these ellipses... Each planet moves so that a straight line drawn to connect it with the sun sweeps out equal areas in equal times. ...The discoveries ...enabled Newton to formulate the laws of mechanics in general and those of gravitation in particular. ...He was able to develop Kepler's laws into a comprehensive physical theory only because he managed first to create the necessary mathematical tools... differential and integral calculus, the basic mathematical techniques for dealing with variable quantities, such as the movement of bodies in the course of time. ...[H]e succeeded in drawing from Kepler's empirical laws the principles of motion that applied [to] every instant of time and thus shaped planetary motion into complete orbits.”

“Now I a fourfold vision see, And a fourfold vision is given to me ; 'Tis fourfold in my supreme delight, And threefold in soft Beulah's night, And twofold Always. May God us keep From Single vision, & Newton's sleep !”

“No monument should stand over [my] grave, only an apple-tree, in memory of the three apples; the two of Eve and Paris, which made hell out of earth, and that of Newton, which elevated the earth again into the circle of heavenly bodies.”

“The landscape has been so totally changed, the ways of thinking have been so deeply affected, that it is very hard to get hold of what it was like before... It is very hard to realize how total a change in outlook he has produced.”

“[T]he life and writings of Sir Isaac Newton abound with the richest counsel. Here the philosopher will learn the art by which alone he can acquire an immortal name. The moralist will trace the lineaments of a character adjusted to all the symmetry of which our imperfect nature is susceptible; and the Christian will contemplate with delight the high-priest of science quitting the study of the material universe,—the scene of his intellectual triumphs,—to investigate with humility and patience the mysteries of his faith.”

“If Sir Isaac Newton had not been distinguished as a mathematician and a natural philosopher, he would have enjoyed a high reputation as a theologian.”

“Newton is known for humbly declaring that he had achieved his great breakthroughs by 'standing on the shoulders of giants.' Though this may be true in part, it is largely humbug. Newton was hardly humble, and it would be just as true to say that he achieved greatness by stamping on the shoulders of giants. When others, such as Robert Hooke and Gottfried Leibniz, made breakthroughs in fields he was also researching, Newton fought ferociously to deny them credit for their work.”

“There is a basic incompatibility between any organization and freedom of thought. Suppose Newton had founded a Church of Newtonian Physics and refused to show his formula to anyone who doubted the tenets of Newtonian Physics?”

“A student of the history of physical science will assign to Newton a further importance which the average man can hardly appreciate. ...the separation ...of positive scientific inquiries from questions of ultimate causation.”