Sir Isaac Newton, 1642 – 1727

“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.” 

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

“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” 

“Men build too many walls and not enough bridges.” 

“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” 

“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.” 

“What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.” 

“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” 

“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy” 

“and to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction” 

“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.” 

“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent” 

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

“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” 

“What goes up must come down.” 

“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation” 

system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” 

“You have to make the rules, not follow them” 

“Trials are medicines which our gracious and wise Physician prescribes because we need them; and he proportions the frequency and weight of them to what the case requires. Let us trust his skill and thank him for his prescription.” 

“Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, "By thinking about it all the time.” 

“Les hommes construisent trop de murs et pas assez de ponts.” 

“Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?” 

“Blind metaphysical necessity, which is certainly the same always and everywhere, could produce no variety of things. All that diversity of natural things which we find suited to different times and places could arise from nothing but the ideas and will of a Being, necessarily existing.” 

“To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me” 

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age” 

“To explain all nature is too difficult a task for any one man or even for any one age. Tis much better to do a little with certainty & leave the rest for others that come after than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of anything.”