Isaac Newton Quotes

#1. 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.

Isaac Newton

#2. The changing of Bodies into Light, and Light into Bodies, is very conformable to the Course of Nature, which seems delighted with Transmutations.

Isaac Newton

#3. Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.

Isaac Newton

#4. Absolute, true and mathematical time, of itself, and from its own nature flows equably without relation to anything external.

Isaac Newton

#5. All my discoveries have been made in answer to prayer.

Isaac Newton

#6. To arrive at the simplest truth requires years of contemplation.

Isaac Newton

#7. No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible.

Isaac Newton

#8. Let me think ... I wonder if an anvil will drop like an apple?

Isaac Newton

#9. This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.

Isaac Newton

#10. I understood. I have understood. I do understand.

Isaac Newton

#11. That the divided but contiguous particles of bodies may be separated from one another is a matter of observation; and, in the particles that remain undivided, our minds are able to distinguish yet lesser parts, as is mathematically demonstrated.

Isaac Newton

#12. 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?

Isaac Newton

#13. The moon gravitates towards the earth and by the force of gravity is continually drawn off from a rectilinear motion and retained in its orbit.

Isaac Newton

#14. 'Tis the temper of the hot and superstitious part of mankind in matters of religion ever to be fond of mysteries, and for that reason to like best what they understand least.

Isaac Newton

#15. Why there is one body in our System qualified to give light and heat to all the rest, I know no reason but because the Author of the System thought it convenient; and why there is but one body of this kind, I know no reason, but because one was sufficient to warm and enlighten all the rest.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#17. That one body should act upon another through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else is so great an absurdity that no man suited to do science ... can ever fall into it, ... Gravity must be caused by an agent ... but whether that agent be material or immaterial I leave to my readers.

Isaac Newton

#18. The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

Isaac Newton

#19. The instinct of brutes and insects can be the effect of nothing else than the wisdom and skill of a powerful ever-living agent.

Isaac Newton

#20. I am ashamed to tell you to how many figures I carried these calculations [of Pi], having no other business at the time

Isaac Newton

#21. 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.

Isaac Newton

#22. To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction; in other words, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and always opposite in direction.

Isaac Newton

#23. No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.

Isaac Newton

#24. Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#26. Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.

Isaac Newton

#27. Nature is very consonant and conformable with herself.

Isaac Newton

#28. 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.

Isaac Newton

#29. When two forces unite, their efficiency double.

Isaac Newton

#30. Gravity must be caused by an Agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this Agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers.

Isaac Newton

#31. Every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the squares of their distances.

Isaac Newton

#32. 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?

Isaac Newton

#33. I consider my greatest accomplishment to be lifelong celibacy.

Isaac Newton

#34. If the experiments which I urge be defective, it cannot be difficult to show the defects; but if valid, then by proving the theory, they must render all objections invalid.

Isaac Newton

#35. I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me.

Isaac Newton

#36. My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.

Isaac Newton

#37. Gravity may put the planets into motion, but without the divine Power, it could never put them into such a circulating motion as they have about the Sun; and therefore, for this as well as other reasons, I am compelled to ascribe the frame of this System to an intelligent Agent.

Isaac Newton

#38. Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy

Isaac Newton

#39. For the Rays, to speak properly, have no Colour. In them there is nothing else than a certain power and disposition to stir up a sensation of this Colour or that.

Isaac Newton

#40. The Ignis Fatuus is a vapor shining without heat.

Isaac Newton

#41. When the adversaries of Erasmus had got the Trinity into his edition, they threw by their manuscript as an old almanac out of date.

Isaac Newton

#42. The way to chastity is not to struggle directly with incontinent thoughts but to avert the thoughts by some imployment, or by reading, or meditating on other things.

Isaac Newton

#43. For I see not what there is desirable in publick esteeme, were I able to acquire & maintaine it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline.

Isaac Newton

#44. 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.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#46. We are certainly not to relinquish the evidence of experiments for the sake of dreams and vain fictions of our own devising; nor are we to recede from the analogy of Nature, which is wont to be simple and always consonant to itself.

Isaac Newton

#47. 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.

Isaac Newton

#48. The smaller the planets are, they are, other things being equal, of so much the greater density; for so the powers of gravity on their several surfaces come nearer to equality. They are likewise, other things being equal, of the greater density, as they are nearer to the sun.

Isaac Newton

#49. I have been much amused at ye singular phenomena resulting from bringing of a needle into contact with a piece of amber or resin fricated on silke clothe. Ye flame putteth me in mind of sheet lightning on a small-how very small-scale.

Isaac Newton

#50. Physics, beware of metaphysics.

Isaac Newton

#51. I have studied these things - you have not.

Isaac Newton

#52. 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 ).

Isaac Newton

#53. God made and governs the world invisibly, and has commanded us to love and worship him and no other God; to honor our parents and masters, and love our neighbours as ourselves; and to be temperate, just, and peaceable, and to be merciful even to brute beasts.

Isaac Newton

#54. He that in ye mine of knowledge deepest diggeth, hath, like every other miner, ye least breathing time, and must sometimes at least come to terr. alt. for air.

Isaac Newton

#55. And to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction

Isaac Newton

#56. We are not to consider the world as the body of God: he is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts; and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to his will.

Isaac Newton

#57. Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.

Isaac Newton

#58. If I have done great things it's because I was standing in the closet of smart men taking notes and then publishing their ideas as my own.

Isaac Newton

#59. Oh Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest the mischief done! [Apocryphal]

Isaac Newton

#60. Infinites, when considered absolutely without any restriction or limitation, are neither equal nor unequal, nor have any certain proportion one to another, and therefore, the principle that all infinites are equal is a precarious one.

Isaac Newton

#61. One [method] is by a Watch to keep time exactly. But, by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a watch hath not yet been made.

Isaac Newton

#62. In the reign of the Greek Emperor Justinian , and again in the reign of Phocas , the Bishop of Rome obtained some dominion over the Greek Churches, but of no long continuance. His standing dominion was only over the nations of the Western Empire, represented by Daniel's fourth Beast.

Isaac Newton

#63. The degree and duration of the torment of these degenerate and anti-Christian people, should be no other than would be approved of by those angels who had ever labored for their salvation, and that Lamb who had redeemed them with his most precious blood.

Isaac Newton

#64. He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.

Isaac Newton

#65. Qu. 31. Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues or Forces, by which they act at a distance, not only upon the Rays of Light for reflecting, refracting and reflecting them, but also upon one another for producing a great part of the Phaenomena of Nature?

Isaac Newton

#66. An object that is at rest will tend to stay at rest. An object that is in motion will tend to stay in motion.

Isaac Newton

#67. No old Men (excepting Dr. Wallis) love Mathematicks.

Isaac Newton

#68. From the same principles, I now demonstrate the frame of the System of the World.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#70. Definition of inertia: 'The vis insita, or innate force of matter, is a power of resisting by which every body, as much as in it lies, endeavours to preserve its present state, whether it be of rest or of moving uniformly forward in a straight line.

Isaac Newton

#71. Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons which God hath put into his own breast.

Isaac Newton

#72. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.

Isaac Newton

#73. Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.

Isaac Newton

#74. Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.

Isaac Newton

#75. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction

Isaac Newton

#76. The wonderful arrangement and harmony of the cosmos would only originate in the plan of an almighty omniscient being. This is and remains my greatest comprehension.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#78. 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.

Isaac Newton

#79. My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.

Isaac Newton

#80. What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

Isaac Newton

#81. All the characters of the Passion agree to the year 34; and that is the only year to which they all agree.

Isaac Newton

#82. All variety of created objects which represent order and life in the universe could happen only by the willful reasoning of its original Creator, whom I call the 'Lord God.'

Isaac Newton

#83. If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything

Isaac Newton

#84. I keep the subject of my inquiry constantly before me, and wait till the first dawning opens gradually, by little and little, into a full and clear light.

Isaac Newton

#85. Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation.

Isaac Newton

#86. For it became him [God] who created them [the atoms] to set them in order. And if he did so, it's unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature.

Isaac Newton

#87. Absolute space, in its own nature, without regard to anything external, remains always similar and immovable. Relative space is some movable dimension or measure of the absolute spaces, which our senses determine by its position to bodies, and which is vulgarly taken for immovable space.

Isaac Newton

#88. 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.

Isaac Newton

#89. A body in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted on by an outside force.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#91. Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?

Isaac Newton

#92. By such deductions the law of gravitation is rendered probable, that every particle attracts every other particle with a force which varies inversely as the square of the distance. The law thus suggested is assumed to be universally true.

Isaac Newton

#93. Nothing can be divided into more parts than it can possibly be constituted of. But matter (i.e. finite) cannot be constituted of infinite parts.

Isaac Newton

#94. In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.

Isaac Newton

#95. Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.

Isaac Newton

#96. Therefore to the same natural effects we must, as far as possible, assign the same causes.

Isaac Newton

#97. I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.

Isaac Newton

#98. The hypothesis of matter's being at first evenly spread through the heavens is, in my opinion, inconsistent with the hypothesis of innate gravity without a supernatural power to reconcile them, and therefore, it infers a deity.

Isaac Newton

#99. An object in motion tends to remain in motion along a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force.

Isaac Newton

#100. 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.

Isaac Newton