Isaac Newton

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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.

Sir Isaac Newton (4 January 1643 - 31 March 1727 or in Old Style : 25 December 1642 - 20 March 1727) was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, alchemist, inventor and natural philosopher who is regarded by many as the most influential scientist in history, and is best known for discovering the Laws of Gravity.

1 Sourced
- 1.1 Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)
2 Attributed
3 External links

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Sourced

Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas
- Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — but my greatest friend is truth.
- Variant translation: Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my best friend is truth.
- Variant translation 2: Plato is my friend — Aristotle is my friend — truth is a greater friend.
- These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions] (c. 1664)

If I have seen further it is by standing on ye shoulders of Giants.
- Modernized variants: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
  If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.
- Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [dated as 5 February 1675 using the Julian calendar with March 25th rather than January 1st as New Years Day, equivalent to 15 February 1676 by Gregorian reckonings]

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.
- Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [5 February 1675 (O.S.)]

Are not gross bodies and light convertible into one another; and may not bodies receive much of their activity from the particles of light which enter into their composition? The changing of bodies into light, and light into bodies, is very conformable to the course of Nature, which seems delighted with transmutations.
- Opticks (1704)

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.
- Opticks (1704)

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.
The design of God was much otherwise. He gave this and the Prophecies of the Old Testament, not to gratify mens curiosities by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own Providence, not the Interpreters, be then manifested thereby to the world.
- Observations Upon The Apocalypse Of St. John (published posthumously 1733)

I have studied these things — you have not.
- Reported as Newton's response, whenever Edmond Halley would say anything disrespectful of religion, by Sir David Brewster in The Life of Sir Isaac Newton (1831). This has often been quoted in recent years as having been a statement specifically defending Astrology. Newton wrote extensively on the importance of Prophecy, and studied Alchemy, but there is little evidence that he took favourable notice of Astrology. Brewster attributes the anecdote to the astronomer Nevil Maskelyne who passed it on to Oxford professor Stephen Peter Rigaud.

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.
- Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855) by Sir David Brewster (Volume II. Ch. 27)

Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!
- This is from an anecdote found in St. Nicholas magazine, Vol. 5, No. 4, (February 1878) :

Sir Isaac Newton had on his table a pile of papers upon which were written calculations that had taken him twenty years to make. One evening, he left the room for a few minutes, and when he came back he found that his little dog "Diamond" had overturned a candle and set fire to the precious papers, of which nothing was left but a heap of ashes.

If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.
- This is from an anecdote found in The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy Cambridge University Press (1975) :

Newton’s reflecting telescope was an extraordinary achievement. His first telescope was about 6 inches long with a 2 inch mirror and magnified by forty times. He was proud of his handiwork even sixty years later, when Conduitt reports a conversation: "I asked him where he had it made, he said he made it himself, and when I asked him where he got his tools said he made them himself and laughing added if I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything..."

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Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)

Hypotheses non fingo.
- Translation: I frame no hypotheses.
- A statement that the law of universal gravitation was a fundamental empirical law, and that he proposed no hypotheses on how gravity could propagate.

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.
- Laws of Motion, I

The alternation of motion is ever proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.
- Laws of Motion, II

To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.
- Laws of Motion. III

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Attributed

In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God's existence.
- Quoted in Wisdom (2002) by Des MacHale

Numero pondere et mensura Deus omnia condidit.
- Translation: God created everything by number, weight and measure.

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, and leave the rest for others that come after you, than to explain all things.
- Quoted in Calculus Gems (1992) G Simmons