Quotes About Isaac Newton

#1. I can measure the motions of bodies," Sir Isaac Newton once observed, "but I cannot measure human folly." Nor could he do so as regards his own. He was to lose

John Kenneth Galbraith

#2. Descartes gave sight to the blind. These saw the errors of antiquity and of the sciences. The path he struck out is since become boundless [ ... ] In fathoming this abyss no bottom has been found. We are now to examine what discoveries Sir Isaac Newton has made in it.

Voltaire

#3. Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, By thinking about it all the time.

Isaac Newton

#4. The "gravity train" was devised in the seventeenth century by British scientist Robert Hooke, who presented the idea in a letter to Isaac Newton. The idea has been seriously presented a few times, such as to the Paris Academy of Sciences in the nineteenth century.

Stephen Baxter

#5. On this day long ago, a child was born who, by age 30, would transform the world. Happy Birthday Isaac Newton b. Dec 25, 1642

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#6. As Einstein once wrote (more ringingly in German than in this English translation by one of us [DG]) to honor Isaac Newton: Look unto the stars to teach us How the master's thoughts can reach us Each one follows Newton's math Silently along its path.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson

#7. The great Sir Isaac Newton, He once made a valid proclamation, That the forces equal to a nominated mass, when multiplied by acceleration That was the law of motion.

Richard Digance

#8. So great a contribution to physics was Two New Sciences that scholars have long maintained that the book anticipated Isaac Newton's laws of motion.

Stephen Hawking

#9. Indeed, Isaac Newton himself, who introduced the concept of immutable laws which guided the planets and stars without divine intervention, believed that the elegance of these laws pointed to the existence of God.

Michio Kaku

#10. The Church no more gave us the New Testament canon than Isaac Newton gave us the force of gravity.

J.I. Packer

#11. Along with William Shakespeare and Isaac Newton, Charles Darwin is Britain's greatest gift to the world. He was our greatest thinker.

Richard Dawkins

#12. Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady.

Booth Tarkington

#13. 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 Isaac Newton has produced.

Hermann Bondi

#14. Sir Isaac Newton is said to have avowed that he felt like a child picking up shells beside the great and unexplored ocean of truth.

Mary Shelley

#15. Billy coughed when the door was opened, and when he coughed he shit thin gruel. This was in accordance with the Third Law of Motion according to Sir Isaac Newton. This law tells us that for every action there is a reaction and opposite in direction.
This can be useful in rocketry.

Kurt Vonnegut

#16. 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

#17. It was a little insulting to admit that a drooling dolt like Coulter might be right about something, but after all, Isaac Newton didn't reject gravity just because the apple had a low IQ.

Jeff Lindsay

#18. The aether: Invented by Isaac Newton, reinvented by James Clerk Maxwell. This is the stuff that fills up the empty space of the universe. Discredited and discarded by Einstein, the aether is now making a Nixonian comeback. It's really the vacuum, but burdened by theoretical, ghostly particles.

Leon M. Lederman

#19. Newton was born on Christmas Day, 1642, so tiny that, as his mother told him years later, he would have fit into a quart mug. Sickly, feeling abandoned by his parents, quarrelsome, unsociable, a virgin to the day he died, Isaac Newton was perhaps the greatest scientific genius who ever lived.

Carl Sagan

#20. predecessor of Isaac Newton at Cambridge University, maintained that irrational numbers have no meaning independent of geometric lengths.

Morris Kline

#21. You must not talk about 'ain't and can't' when you speak of this great wonderful world round you, of which the wisest man knows only the very smallest corner, and is, as the great Sir Isaac Newton said, only a child picking up pebbles on the shore of a boundless ocean.

Charles Kingsley

#22. Alfred Hitchcock, Isaac Newton, Elvis Presley, Captain Bligh, they're heroic or pathetic depending on which book you buy.

Bob Seger

#23. In 1687, when Sir Isaac Newton published his Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, probably the most important single work ever published in the physical sciences.

Stephen Hawking

#24. Could we have entered into the mind of Sir Isaac Newton, and have traced all the steps by which he produced his great works, we might see nothing very extraordinary in the process.

Joseph Priestley

#25. The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Paul Davies

#26. In all of human history there may never have been a mind as brilliant as Isaac Newton's - just think what an amazing, unheard-of intellectual effort it took to discover a single law that accounted for the fall of earthly bodies and the movement of the planets! Well, Newton believed in God.

Michel Houellebecq

#27. Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.

Matthew Stewart

#28. All our names are just stupid nicknames they made up - like Alby for Albert Einstein, Newt for Isaac Newton, and me - Thomas. As in Edison.

Anonymous

#29. I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men." - Sir Isaac Newton

Anonymous

#30. That was a lesson everyone (every human?) learned before puberty, not to let reality seem diminished by fiction. As the proverb went, It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison.

Eliezer Yudkowsky

#31. I esteem his understanding and subtlety highly, but I consider that they have been put to ill use in the greater part of his work, where the author studies things of little use...

{Writing about Isaac Newton}

Christiaan Huygens

#32. The split between religion and science is relatively new. Isaac Newton, who first worked out the laws by which gravity held the planets and even the stars in their traces, was sufficiently impressed by the scale and regularity of the universe to ascribe it all to God.

Seth Shostak

#33. If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants. SIR ISAAC NEWTON

Jon Kabat-Zinn

#34. 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

#35. Godliness consists in the knowledge love & worship of God, Humanity in love, righteousness & good offices towards man.

Isaac Newton

#36. 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

#37. 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 of it.

Isaac Newton

#38. 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

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

Isaac Newton

#40. If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.

Isaac Newton

#41. 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.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#44. If I had seen further than others, it's because I stood upon the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

#45. 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.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#48. 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

#49. We all know we fall. Newton's discovery was that the moon falls, too-and by the same rule that we do.

Isaac Asimov

#50. A cylinder of air reaching to the top of the atmosphere is of equal weight with a cylinder of water about 33 feet high.

Isaac Newton

#51. I understood. I have understood. I do understand.

Isaac Newton

#52. 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

#53. 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

#54. 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

#55. A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a Celestial Observ[at]ion: and for this end a good Jewel watch may suffice till a better sort of Watch can be found out. But when the Longitude at sea is once lost, it cannot be found again by any watch.

Isaac Newton

#56. 'God' is a relative word and has a respect to servants, and 'Deity' is the dominion of God, not over his own body, as those imagine who fancy God to be the soul of the world, but over servants.

Isaac Newton

#57. '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

#58. 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

#59. Chickens at rest tend to stay at rest. Chickens in motion tend to cross roads.

Isaac Newton

#60. Every body persists in a state of rest or of uniform motion in a straight line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces having impact upon it.

Isaac Newton

#61. Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.

Isaac Newton

#62. Newton said, 'If I have seen further than others, it is because I've stood on the shoulders of giants.' These days we stand on each other's feet!

Richard Hamming

#63. Just because an apple falls one hundred times out of a hundred does not mean it will fall on the hundred and first.

Derek Landy

#64. The best way to understanding is a few good examples.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#66. 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

#67. Perhaps the most important contribution to science that the Royal Society has made in its three centuries of existence is its early role in publishing Newton's masterful account of his discoveries.

Julian Schwinger

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

Isaac Newton

#69. 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

#70. It may be that there is no such thing as an equable motion, whereby time may be accurately measured. All motions may be accelerated or retarded, but the true, or equable, progress of absolute time is liable to no change.

Isaac Newton

#71. 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

#72. This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.

Isaac Newton

#73. 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

#74. Impressed force is the action exerted on a body to change its state either of resting or of moving uniformly straight forward.

Isaac Newton

#75. 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

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

Isaac Newton

#77. Opposite to godliness is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind, that it never had many professors.

Isaac Newton

#78. 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

#79. Against filling the Heavens with fluid Mediums, unless they be exceeding rare, a great Objection arises from the regular and very lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets in all manner of Courses through the Heavens.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#81. Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#83. Centripetal force is the force by which bodies are drawn from all sides, are impelled, or in any way tend, toward some point as to a center.

Isaac Newton

#84. F I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#86. The more time and devotion one spends in the worship of false gods, the less he is able to spend in that of the True One.

Isaac Newton

#87. 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

#88. The motions which the planets now have could not spring from any natural cause alone, but were impressed by an intelligent Agent.

Isaac Newton

#89. Because of Diamond, I have had to begin much of the work afresh. I will not, however, rid myself of her, nor even punish her. She knew not what she was doing, and that which she did was for my protection and for love of my person. Her place remains at my side or against my feet when I lie abed.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#91. To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.

Isaac Newton

#92. 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

#93. 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

#94. In experimental philosophy, propositions gathered from phenomena by induction should be considered either exactly or very nearly true notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses, until yet other phenomena make such propositions either more exact or liable to exceptions.

Isaac Newton

#95. 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

#96. They who search after the Philosopher's Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life.

Isaac Newton

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

Isaac Newton

#98. Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.

Isaac Newton

#99. Pictures, propagated by motion along the fibers of the optic nerves in the brain, are the cause of vision.

Isaac Newton

#100. 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