List of Isaac Newton Quotes

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.

Ax: 100 Every Thing Doth Naturally Persevere In Yt State In Wch It Is Unlesse It Bee Interrupted By Some Externall Cause, Hence... [a] Body Once Moved Will Always Keepe Ye Same Celerity, Quantity & Determination Of Its Motion.

Doth Not This Æthereal Medium In Passing Out Of Water, Glass, Crystal, And Other Compact And Dense Bodies Into Empty Spaces, Grow Denser And Denser By Degrees, And By That Means Refract The Rays Of Light Not In A Point, But By Bending Them Gradually In Curve Lines? And Doth Not The Gradual Condensation Of This Medium Extend To Some Distance From The Bodies, And Thereby Cause The Inflexions Of The Rays Of Light, Which Pass By The Edges Of Dense Bodies, At Some Distance From The Bodies?

Do Not The Rays Which Differ In Refrangibility Differ Also In Flexibity; And Are They Not By Their Different Inflexions Separated From One Another, So As After Separation To Make The Colours In The Three Fringes Above Described? And After What Manner Are They Inflected To Make Those Fringes?

Thus You May Multiply Each Stone 4 Times & No More For They Will Then Become Oyles Shining In Ye Dark And Fit For Magicall Uses. You May Ferment Them With Gold And Silver, By Keeping The Stone And Metal In Fusion Together For A Day, & Then Project Upon Metalls. This Is The Multiplication Of Ye Stone In Vertue. To Multiply It In Weight Ad To It Of Ye First Gold Whether Philosophic Or Vulgar.

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.

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.

Those Qualities Of Bodies That Cannot Be Intended And Remitted [i.e., Qualities That Cannot Be Increased And Diminished] And That Belong To All Bodies On Which Experiments Can Be Made Should Be Taken As Qualities Of All Bodies Universally.

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.

Are Not All Hypotheses Erroneous, In Which Light Is Supposed To Consist In Pression Or Motion, Propagated Through A Fluid Medium? For In All These Hypotheses The Phaenomena Of Light Have Been Hitherto Explain'd By Supposing That They Arise From New Modifications Of The Rays; Which Is An Erroneous Supposition.

I See I Have Made Myself A Slave To Philosophy, But If I Get Free Of Mr. Linus's Business I Will Resolutely Bid Adew To It Eternally, Excepting For What I Do For My Private Satisfaction Or Leave To Come Out After Me. For I See A Man Must Either Resolve To Put Out Nothing New Or To Become A Slave To Defend It.

The Main Business Of Natural Philosophy Is To Argue From Phænomena Without Feigning Hypotheses, And To Deduce Causes From Effects Till We Come To The Very First Cause, Which Certainly Is Not Mechanical; And Not Only To Unfold The Mechanism Of The World, But Chiefly To Resolve These, And To Such Like Questions.