Isaac Newton Quotes

140 Sourced Quotes

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
Every particle of matter is attracted by or gravitates to every other particle of matter with a force inversely proportional to the squares of their distances.

Isaac Newton
We are not to consider the world as the body of God: he is an uniform being, void of organs, members, or parts; and they are his creatures, subordinate to him, and subservient to his will.

Isaac Newton
I have presented principles of philosophy that are not, however, philosophical but strictly mathematical-that is, those on which the study of philosophy can be based. These principles are the laws and conditions of motions and of forces, which especially relate to philosophy.

Isaac Newton
It is the glory of geometry that from so few principles, fetched from without, it is able to produce so many things.

Isaac Newton
The Synthesis consists in assuming the Causes discovered and established as Principles, and by them explaining the Phænomena proceeding from them, and proving the Explanations.

Isaac Newton