Isaac Newton Quotes

140 Sourced Quotes

No more causes of natural things should be admitted than are both true and sufficient to explain their phenomena.

Isaac Newton
After the same Manner in Geometry, if a Line drawn any certain Way be reckon'd for Affirmative, then a Line drawn the contrary Way may be taken for Negative: As if AB be drawn to the right, and BC to the left; and AB be reckon'd Affirmative, then BC will be Negative; because in the drawing it diminishes AB...

Isaac Newton
I have that honour for him as to believe that he wrote good sense; and therefore take that sense to be his which is the best.

Isaac Newton
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.

Isaac Newton
Now in this vision of the Image composed of four Metals, the foundation of all Daniel's Prophecies is laid. It represents a body of four great nations, which should reign over the earth successively, viz. the people of Babylonia, the Persians, the Greeks, and the Romans. And by a stone cut out without hands, which fell upon the feet of the Image, and brake all the four Metals to pieces, and became a great mountain, and filled the whole earth; it further represents that a new kingdom should arise, after the four, and conquer all those nations, and grow very great, and last to the end of all ages.

Isaac Newton
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
No being exists or can exist which is not related to space in some way. God is everywhere, created minds are somewhere, and body is in the space that it occupies; and whatever is neither everywhere nor anywhere does not exist. And hence it follows that space is an effect arising from the first existence of being, because when any being is postulated, space is postulated.

Isaac Newton
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. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.

Isaac Newton
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? And do not the three Fringes of colour'd Light... arise from three such bendings?

Isaac Newton
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
If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over.

Isaac Newton
All material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles... variously associated with the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order: and if he did so, it is unphilosophical to seek for any other Origin of the World, or to pretend that it might arise out of a Chaos by the mere Laws of Nature.

Isaac Newton
That one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of any thing else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity, that I believe no man, who has in philosophical matters a compentent faculty of thinking, can ever fall into it.

Isaac Newton
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
Now the smallest Particles of Matter may cohere by the strongest Attractions, and compose bigger Particles of weaker Virture.... There are therefore Agents in Nature able to make the Particles of Bodies stick together by very strong Attraction. And it is the Business of experimental Philosophy to find them out.

Isaac Newton
Absolute space, in its own nature, without relation to anything external, remains always similar and immovable.

Isaac Newton
By such deductions the law of gravitation is rendered probable, that every particle attracts every other particle with a force which varies inversely as the square of the distance. The law thus suggested is assumed to be universally true.

Isaac Newton
Did blind chance know that there was light and what was its refraction, and fit the eyes of all creatures after the most curious manner to make use of it? These and other suchlike considerations, always have, and always will prevail with mankind, to believe that there is a Being who made all things, who has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.

Isaac Newton
Mathematicians that find out, settle & do all the business must content themselves with being nothing but dry calculators and drudges & another that does nothing but pretend and grasp at all things must carry away all the invention...

Isaac Newton
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.

Isaac Newton
For Nature is very consonant and conformable to herself.

Isaac Newton
The description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. Geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn.

Isaac Newton
Do not all fixed bodies, when heated beyond a certain degree, emit light and shine; and is not this emission performed by the vibrating motions of their parts?

Isaac Newton
The whole difficulty of philosophy seems to me to lie in investigating the forces of nature from the phenomena of motion, and in demonstrating that from these forces other phenomena will ensue.

Isaac Newton
So far I have accounted for the phenomena presented to us by the heavens and the sea by means of the force of gravity, but I have as yet assigned no cause to this gravity... I have not been able to deduce from phenomena the raison d'être of the properties of gravity and I have not set up hypotheses.

Isaac Newton
'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
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
The quantity of motion is the measure of the same, arising from the velocity and quantity of matter conjointly.

Isaac Newton
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
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. And therefore as they would understand the frame of the world must endeavor to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so must it be in seeking to understand these visions.

Isaac Newton