Sir Isaac Newton was born on the 4th of January, 1643 in Woolsthorpe Manor House, United Kingdom. He was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, theologian and author who is widely recognised as one of the most influential scientists of all time and as a key figure in the scientific revolution of the 17th century.
Isaac Newton formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation, he built the first practical reflecting telescope. Newton also formulated an empirical law of cooling, made the first theoretical calculation of the speed of sound, and introduced the notion of a Newtonian fluid. Beyond his work on the mathematical sciences, Newton dedicated much of his time to the study of alchemy and biblical chronology.
Politically and personally tied to the Whig party, Newton served two brief terms as Member of Parliament for the University of Cambridge. He was knighted by Queen Anne in 1705 and spent the last three decades of his life in London, serving as Warden and Master of the Royal Mint, as well as president of the Royal Society. Newton died in his sleep in London on 20th March, 1727.
Below, you will find a collection of popular Isaac Newton quotes and sayings.
70 Isaac Newton Quotes About Life, Science & Gravity
“Gravity explains the motions of the planets, but it cannot explain who sets the planets in motion.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“To any action there is always an opposite and equal reaction; in other words, the actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal and always opposite in direction.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies but not the madness of people.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“What goes up must come down.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“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.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Whence arises all that order and beauty we see in the world?” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“This principle of nature being very remote from the conceptions of Philosophers, I forbore to describe it in that book, least I should be accounted an extravagant freak and so prejudice my Readers against all those things which were the main designe of the book.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Truth is the offspring of silence and meditation. I keep the subject constantly before me and wait ’til the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“They who search after the Philosopher’s Stone [are] by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“There are more sure marks of authenticity in the Bible that in any profane history” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“That one body should act upon another through a vacuum without the mediation of anything else is so great an absurdity that no man suited to do science…can ever fall into it,…..Gravity must be caused by an agent…but whether that agent be material or immaterial I leave to my readers.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“we are not to consider the world as the body of God, or the several parts thereof as the parts of God. He is a uniform Being, void of organs, members or parts,…being everywhere present to the things themselves. And since space is divisible in infinitum, and matter is not necessarily in all places, it may also be allowed that God is able to create particles of matter of several sizes and figures, and in several proportions of space, and perhaps of different densities and forces, and thereby to vary the laws of Nature, and make worlds of several sorts in several parts of the Universe. At least I see nothing of contradiction in this.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“what the space that is empty of bodies is filled with” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Philosophy is such an impertinently litigious lady that a man had as good be engaged in lawsuits as have to do with her.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.― Isaac Newton Quote
To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.― Isaac Newton Quote
It seems probable to me that God, in the beginning, formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, moveable particles.― Isaac Newton Quote
Vacuum I call every place in which a body is able to move without resistance. ― Isaac Newton Quote
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.― Isaac Newton Quote
God created everything by number, weight and measure. ― Isaac Newton Quote
Sir Isaac Newton was asked how he discovered the law of gravity. He replied, “By thinking about it all the time.― Isaac Newton Quote
Don’t doubt the Creator because it is inconceivable that accidents alone could be the controller of this universe.― Isaac Newton Quote
I believe the more I study science, the more I believe in God.― Isaac Newton Quote
“Yeah, s3x is cool, but have you tried solving the brachistochrone problem in a single night?” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men’s curiosity by enabling them to fore know things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and His own providence, not the interpreters, be thereby manifested to the world.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“For it became him [God] who created them [the atoms] to set them in order. And if he did so, it’s 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 Quote
“In experimental philosophy we are to look upon propositions inferred by general induction from phenomena as accurately or very nearly true, notwithstanding any contrary hypotheses that may be imagined, till such time as other phenomena occur, by which they may either be made more accurate, or liable to exceptions. This rule we must follow, that the argument of induction may not be evaded by hypotheses.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“The more time and devotion one spends in the worship of false gods, the less he is able to spend in that of the True One.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“If others would think as hard as I did, then they would get similar results.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“In the absence of any other proof, the thumb alone would convince me of God’s existence.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“What Descartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, and especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us that the Lord will provide.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“How came the bodies of animals to be contrived with so much art, and for what ends were their several parts?
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?…and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent…?” ― Isaac Newton Quote
Was the eye contrived without skill in Opticks, and the ear without knowledge of sounds?…and these things being rightly dispatch’d, does it not appear from phænomena that there is a Being incorporeal, living, intelligent…?” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things.”― Isaac Newton Quote
“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.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Tact is the knack of making a point without making an enemy.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“He who thinks half-heartedly will not believe in God; but he who really thinks has to believe in God.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“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 any thing.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“A Vulgar Mechanick can practice what he has been taught or seen done, but if he is in an error he knows not how to find it out and correct it, and if you put him out of his road he is at a stand. Whereas he that is able to reason nimbly and judiciously about figure, force, and motion, is never at rest till he gets over every rub.”― Isaac Newton Quote
“As a blind man has no idea of colors, so have we no idea of the manner by which the all-wise God perceives and understands all things” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“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.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being. And if the fixed stars are the centers of other like systems, these, being formed by the like wise counsel, must be all subject to the dominion of One.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Opposite to [Godliness] is atheism in profession, and idolatry in practise. Atheism is so senseless and odious to mankind that it never had many professors. Can it be by accident that all birds, beasts, and men have their right side and left side alike shaped (except in their bowels), and just two eyes and no more on either side of the face, and just two ears on either side of the head, and a nose with two holes and no more between the eyes, and one mouth under the nose, and either two fore legs or two wings or two arms on the sholders and two legs on the hips, one on either side and no more? Whence arises this uniformity in all their outward shapes but from the counsel and contrivance of an author? Whence is it that the eyes of all sorts of living creatures are transparent to the very bottom and the only transparent members in the body, having on the outside an hard transparent skin, and within transparent juices with a crystalline lens in the middle and a pupil before the lens, all of them so truly shaped and fitted for vision that no artist can mend them? 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 such like considerations always have and ever will prevail with mankind to believe that there is a being who made all things and has all things in his power, and who is therefore to be feared.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“I keep the subject constantly before me and wait till the first dawnings open little by little into the full light.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
Christ comes as a thief in the night, & it is not for us to know the times & seasons which God hath put into his own breast.― Isaac Newton Quote
God is the same God, always and everywhere. He is omnipresent not virtually only, but also substantially, for virtue cannot subsist without substance.― Isaac Newton Quote
An object that is at rest will tend to remain at rest. An object that is in motion will tend to remain in motion unless acted upon by an outside force.― Isaac Newton Quote
We build too many walls and not enough bridges.― Isaac Newton Quote
“No sciences are better attested than the religion of the Bible.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“Nature is exceedingly simple and harmonious with itself.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“the one as much as it advances that of the other. If a body impinge upon another, and by its force change the motion of the other, that body also (because of the equality of the mutual pressure) will undergo an equal change, in its own motion, towards the contrary part.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“No old Men (excepting Dr. Wallis) love Mathematicks.”― Isaac Newton Quote
“Resistance is usually ascribed to bodies at rest, and impulse to those in motion; but motion and rest, as commonly conceived, are only relatively distinguished; nor are those bodies always truly at rest, which commonly are taken to be so.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“For I see not what there is desirable in publick esteeme, were I able to acquire & maintaine it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“If I have done great things it’s because I was standing in the closet of smart men taking notes and then publishing their ideas as my own.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“God who gave Animals self motion beyond our understanding is without doubt able to implant other principles of motion in bodies [which] we may understand as little. Some would readily grant this may be a Spiritual one; yet a mechanical one might be showne, did not I think it better to pass it by.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“I have studied these things – you have not.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“God without dominion, providence, and final causes, is nothing else but Fate and Nature. 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.” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“You have to make the rules, not follow them” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been due more to patient attention, than to any other talent” ― Isaac Newton Quote
“What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean.” ― Isaac Newton Quote