Isaac Newton > Quotes

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”
― Isaac Newton, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton: Volume 5, 1709–1713

“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.”
― Isaac Newton

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.”
― Isaac Newton

“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy”
― Isaac Newton

“What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.”
― Isaac Newton

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.”
― Isaac Newton

“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.”
― Isaac Newton

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

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.”
― Isaac Newton

“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.”
― Sir Isaac Newton

“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 παντοκρατωρ or Universal Ruler.”
― Isaac Newton, The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent”
― Isaac Newton

“What goes up must come down.”
― Isaac Newton

“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.”
― Isaac Newton

“and to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction”
― Isaac Newton

“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation”
― Newton

“You have to make the rules, not follow them”
― Sir Isaac Newton

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.”
― Sir Isaac Newton

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me”
― Isaac Newton

“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”
― Isaac Newton

“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

“If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants.”
― Isaac Newton

“How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?...and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent...?”
― Isaac Newton, Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730

“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

“God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, 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, The Principia : Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy

“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.”
― Isaac Newton

“Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?”
― Isaac Newton, Opticks: Or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections & Colours of Light-Based on the Fourth Edition London, 1730

“Lo que sabemos es una gota de agua; lo que ignoramos es un océano.”
― Isaac Newton

“If I have been able to see further, it was only because I stood on the shoulders of giants.”
― Issac Newton

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age”
― Sir Isaac Newton