Quotes from Isaac Newton


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The Ignis Fatuus is a vapor shining without heat.


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.


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


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


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


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


I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.


A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.


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.


Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.


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.


We build too many walls and not enough bridges.


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


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.


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


What goes up must come down.


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


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


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


To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction.