Isaac Newton Quotes

English physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton, most famous for his law of gravitation, was instrumental in the scientific revolution of the 17th century.

50. “Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.”

49. “If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.”

48. “I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.”

47. “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.”

46. “Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to ye King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by ye law of ye land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves, and ye King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When, therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases...”

Read The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

45. “The 2300 years do not end before the year 2132 nor after 2370.”

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 you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.”

43. “I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”

42. “I have studied these things — you have not.”

41. “I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.”

Read Who Was Isaac Newton?

40. “In default of any other proof, the thumb would convince me of the existence of a God.”

39. “I find more sure remarks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.”

38. “Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!”

37. “It is the perfection of God's works that they are all done with the greatest simplicity. He is the God of order and not of confusion.”

36. “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”

35. “God created everything by number, weight and measure.”

34. “We must believe in one God that we may love & fear him. We must believe that he is the father Almighty, or first author of all things by the almighty power of his will, that we may thank & worship him & him alone for our being and for all the blessings of this life...”

33. “The ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. To practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name.”

32. “Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved.”

31. “I do not define time, space, place, and motion, as being well known to all.”

Read Isaac Newton by James Gleick

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

29. “Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.”

28. “To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.”

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

26. “But it is not to be conceived that mere mechanical causes could give birth to so many regular motions: since the Comets range over all parts of the heavens, in very eccentric orbits.”

25. “He is not Eternity or Infinity, but Eternal and Infinite; he is not Duration or Space, but he endures and is present. He endures for ever and is every where present; and by existing always and every where he constitutes Duration and Space.”

24. “Since every particle of Space is always, and every indivisible moment of Duration is every where, certainly the Maker and Lord of all things cannot be never and no where.”

23. “There are given successive parts in duration, co-existent parts in space, but neither the one nor the other in the person of a man, or his thinking principle; and much less can they be found in the thinking substance of God.”

22. “a God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and every where, could produce no variety of things.”

21. “Are not the Rays of Light in passing by the edges and sides of Bodies, bent several times backwards and forwards, with a motion like that of an Eel?”

Read Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John

20. “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?”

19. “To make way for the regular and lasting Motions of the Planets and Comets, it's necessary to empty the Heavens of all Matter, except perhaps some very thin Vapours, Steams or Effluvia, arising from the Atmospheres of the Earth, Planets and Comets, and from such an exceedingly rare Ethereal
Medium …”

18. “What is there in places empty of matter? and Whence is it that the sun and planets gravitate toward one another without dense matter between them? Whence is it that Nature doth nothing in vain?”

17. “The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.”

16. “It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportions to space, as most conduced to the end for which He formed them...”

15. “Religion is partly fundamental & immutable partly circumstantial & mutable. The first was the Religion of Adam, Enoch, Noah, Abraham Moses Christ & all the saints & consists of two parts our duty towards God & our duty towards man or piety & righteousness, piety which I will here call Godliness & Humanity.”

14. “Godliness consists in the knowledge love & worship of God, Humanity in love, righteousness & good offices towards man.”

13. “Atheism is so senseless & odious to mankind that it never had many professors.”

12. “Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very
specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind.”

11. “The other part of the true religion is our duty to man. We must love our neighbour as our selves, we must be charitable to all men for charity is the greatest of graces, greater then even faith or hope & covers a multitude of sins. We must be righteous & do to all men as we would they should do to us.”

Read The Clockwork Universe: Isaac Newton, the Royal Society, and the Birth of the Modern World

10. “The authority of Emperors, Kings, and Princes, is human. The authority of Councils, Synods, Bishops, and Presbyters, is human. The authority of the Prophets is divine, and comprehends the sum of religion, reckoning Moses and the Apostles among the Prophets; and if an Angel from Heaven preach any other gospel, than what they have delivered, let him be accursed.”

9. “For understanding the Prophecies, we are, in the first place, to acquaint our-selves with the figurative language of the Prophets. This language is taken from the analogy between the world natural, and an empire or kingdom considered as a world politic.”

8. “In the heavens, the Sun and Moon are, by interpreters of dreams, put for the persons of Kings and Queens; but in sacred Prophecy, which regards not single persons, the Sun is put for the whole species and race of Kings...”

7. “When a Beast or Man is put for a kingdom, his parts and qualities are put for the analogous parts and qualities of the kingdom...”

6. “When a man is taken in a mystical sense, his qualities are often signified by his actions, and by
the circumstances of things about him.”

5. “Thus have we, in the Gospels of Matthew and John compared together, the history of Christ's actions in continual order during five Passovers. John is more distinct in the beginning and end; Matthew in the middle: what either omits, the other supplies.”

4. “Thus have we in the Gospels of Matthew and John all things told in due order, from the beginning of John's preaching to the death of Christ, and the years distinguished from one another by such essential characters that they cannot be mistaken.”

3. “Thus the Empire of the Greeks, which at first brake into four kingdoms, became now reduced into two notable ones, henceforward called by Daniel the kings of the South and North.”

2. “In the beginning of the Jewish war in Nero's reign, the Apostles fled out of Judea with their flocks; some beyond Jordan to Pella and other places, some into Egypt, Syria, Mesopotamia, Asia minor, and elsewhere. Peter and John came into Asia, and Peter went thence by Corinth to Rome; but John staying in Asia, was banished by the Romans into Patmos, as the head of a party of the Jews, whose nation was in war with the Romans. By this dispersion of the Christian Jews, the Christian religion, which was already propagated westward as far as Rome, spread fast into all the Roman Empire, and suffered many persecutions under it till the days of Constantine the great and his sons: all which is thus described by Daniel.”

1. “The folly of Interpreters has been, to foretell times and things by this Prophecy, as if God designed to make them Prophets. By this rashness they have not only exposed themselves, but brought the Prophecy also into contempt.”

Read Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730

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