Isaac Newton

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

“Amicus Plato — amicus Aristoteles — magis amica veritas”

“If I have seen further it is by standing on ye sholders of Giants.”

“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.”

“Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center.”

“When I wrote my treatise about our System, I had an eye upon such principles as might work with considering men for the belief of a Deity and nothing can rejoice me more than to find it useful for that purpose. But if I have done the public any service this way, 'tis due to nothing but industry and a patient thought.”

“I keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”

“I have studied these things — you have not.”

“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.”

“We account the Scriptures of God to be the most sublime philosophy. I find more sure remarks of authenticity in the Bible than in any profane history whatever.”

“Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!”

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

“God created everything by number, weight and measure.”

“Whence are you certain that ye Ancient of Days is Christ? Does Christ anywhere sit upon ye Throne?”

“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.”

“One [method] is by a Watch to keep time exactly. But, by reason of the motion of the Ship, the Variation of Heat and Cold, Wet and Dry, and the Difference of Gravity in different Latitudes, such a watch hath not yet been made.”

“A good watch may serve to keep a recconing at Sea for some days and to know the time of a Celestial Observ[at]ion: and for this end a good Jewel watch may suffice till a better sort of Watch can be found out. But when the Longitude at sea is once lost, it cannot be found again by any watch.”

“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...”

“Geometrical Speculations have just as much Elegancy as Simplicity, and deserve just so much praise as they can promise Use.”

“Useful Things, though Mechanical, are justly preferable to useless Speculations in Geometry, as we learn from Pappus.”

“In my Judgment no Lines ought to be admitted into plain Geometry besides the right Line and the Circle.”

“The Simplicity of Figures depend upon the Simplicity of their Genesis and Ideas, and an Æquation is nothing else than a Description (either Geometrical or Mechanical) by which a Figure is generated and rendered more easy to the Conception.”

“Through algebra you easily arrive at equations, but always to pass therefrom to the elegant constructions and demonstrations which usually result by means of the method of porisms is not so easy, nor is one's ingenuity and power of invention so greatly exercised and refined in this analysis.”