(source)
|
Sir Isaac Newton
(25 Dec 1642 - 20 Mar 1727)
English physicist and mathematician who made seminal discoveries in several areas of science, and was the leading scientist of his era.
|
Sir Isaac Newton Quotes on Truth (7 quotes)
>> Click for 109 Science Quotes by Sir Isaac Newton
>> Click for Sir Isaac Newton Quotes on | Action | Attraction | Body | Cause | Color | Colour | Effect | Experiment | Explanation | Force | God | Gravity | Heat | Hypothesis | Law Of Motion | Light | Matter | Motion | Nature | Orbit | Particle | Phenomenon | Philosophy | Planet | Principle | Proportion | Ray | Sun |
>> Click for 109 Science Quotes by Sir Isaac Newton
>> Click for Sir Isaac Newton Quotes on | Action | Attraction | Body | Cause | Color | Colour | Effect | Experiment | Explanation | Force | God | Gravity | Heat | Hypothesis | Law Of Motion | Light | Matter | Motion | Nature | Orbit | Particle | Phenomenon | Philosophy | Planet | Principle | Proportion | Ray | Sun |
Amicus Plato amicus Aristoteles magis amica verita.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
— Sir Isaac Newton
Written in the margin of a notebook while a student at Cambridge. In Richard S. Westfall, Never at Rest (1980), 89.
All knowledge and understanding of the Universe was no more than playing with stones and shells on the seashore of the vast imponderable ocean of truth.
— Sir Isaac Newton
…...
As in Mathematicks, so in Natural Philosophy, the Investigation of difficult Things by the Method of Analysis, ought ever to precede the Method of Composition. This Analysis consists in making Experiments and Observations, and in drawing general Conclusions from them by Induction, and admitting of no Objections against the Conclusions, but such as are taken from Experiments, or other certain Truths. For Hypotheses are not to be regarded in experimental Philosophy.
— Sir Isaac Newton
From Opticks, (1704, 2nd ed. 1718), Book 3, Query 31, 380.
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 seashore, 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
First reported in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations and Characters, of Books and Men (1820), Vol. 1 of 1966 edn, sect. 1259, p. 462. Purported to have been addressed by Newton in the final year of his life (1727) to Chevalier Andrew Michael Ramsey (which conflicts with the Dictionary of National Biography article giving that he was in France at the time). Quoted in David Brewster, Memoirs of the Life, Writings, and Discoveries of Sir Isaac Newton (1855), Vol. 2, 407.
It seems to me farther, that these Particles have not only a Vis inertiae, accompanied with such passive Laws of Motion as naturally result from that Force, but also that they are moved by certain active Principles, such as that of Gravity, and that which causes Fermentation, and the Cohesion of Bodies. These Principles I consider, not as occult Qualities, supposed to result from the specifick Forms of Things, but as general Laws of Nature, by which the Things themselves are form'd; their Truth appearing to us by Phaenomena, though their Causes be not yet discover'd. For these are manifest Qualities, and their Causes only are occult.
— Sir Isaac Newton
From Opticks, (1704, 2nd ed. 1718), Book 3, Query 31, 376-377.
Kepler’s laws, although not rigidly true, are sufficiently near to the truth to have led to the discovery of the law of attraction of the bodies of the solar system. The deviation from complete accuracy is due to the facts, that the planets are not of inappreciable mass, that, in consequence, they disturb each other's orbits about the Sun, and, by their action on the Sun itself, cause the periodic time of each to be shorter than if the Sun were a fixed body, in the subduplicate ratio of the mass of the Sun to the sum of the masses of the Sun and Planet; these errors are appreciable although very small, since the mass of the largest of the planets, Jupiter, is less than 1/1000th of the Sun's mass.
— Sir Isaac Newton
In Isaac Newton and Percival Frost (ed.) Newton’s Principia: Sections I, II, III (1863), 216.
Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.
— Sir Isaac Newton
'Fragments from a Treatise on Revelation'. In Frank E. Manuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974), 120.
See also:
- 25 Dec - short biography, births, deaths and events on date of Newton's birth.
- Isaac Newton - Comments on his “Playing on the Seashore” Quote
- Isaac Newton - “Playing on the Seashore” illustrated quote - Medium 500px.
- Isaac Newton - “Playing on the Seashore” illustrated quote - Large 800px.
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “A change in motion” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “A change in motion” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “In experimental philosophy” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “In experimental philosophy” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Standing on the shoulders of giants” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Standing on the shoulders of giants” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Impressed force is the action” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Impressed force is the action” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Inherent force of matter is the power of resisting…” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Inherent force of matter is the power of resisting…” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Plato is my friend” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - biography from Famous Men of Science (1889)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Plato is my friend” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Colours which appear through the Prism ” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Colours which appear through the Prism ” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Nature does nothing in vain” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Nature does nothing in vain” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “No more causes of natural things should be admitted” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “No more causes of natural things should be admitted” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Truth is ever to be found in simplicity” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “God, in the beginning, formed matter” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “God, in the beginning, formed matter” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “The cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know” - Medium image (500 x 250 px)
- Isaac Newton - context of quote “The cause of gravity is what I do not pretend to know” - Large image (800 x 400 px)
- Sir Isaac Newton’s Apple-Tree - debunking the myth, from Historic Ninepins: A Book of Curiosities by John Timbs (1869)
- Newton and the Dog - debunking the myth about Newton’s dog Diamond.
- Booklist for Isaac Newton.
In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.
(1987) -- 
