Isaac Newton Quotes About Nature

• Our present work sets forth mathematical principles of philosophy. For the basic problem of philosophy seems to be to discover the forces of nature from the phenomena of motions and then to demonstrate the other phenomena from these forces. It is to these ends that the general propositions in books 1 and 2 are directed, while in book 3 our explanation of the system of the world illustrates these propositions.

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  Isaac Newton

  Book  

  Sir Isaac Newton (2014). “Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.60, Cambridge University Press

  659

• Nature does nothing in vain when less will serve; for Nature is pleased with simplicity and affects not the pomp of superfluous causes.

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  Isaac Newton

  Science  

  Sir Isaac Newton (1962). “Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World: The system of the world”, p.398, Univ of California Press

  2621

• Qu. 31. Have not the small Particles of Bodies certain Powers, Virtues or Forces, by which they act at a distance, not only upon the Rays of Light for reflecting, refracting and reflecting them, but also upon one another for producing a great part of the Phænomena of Nature?

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  Isaac Newton

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  SIR ISAAC NEWTON (1952). “MATHEMATICAL PRINCIPLES OF NATURAL PHILOSOPHY OPTICS”

  1275

• All material Things seem to have been composed of the hard and solid Particles ... variously associated with the first Creation by the Counsel of an intelligent Agent. For it became him who created them to set them in order: and if he did so, it is 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.

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  Isaac Newton

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  Isaac Newton (2004). “Isaac Newton: Philosophical Writings”, p.138, Cambridge University Press

  4718

• Nature is pleased with simplicity. And nature is no dummy.

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  Isaac Newton

  2524

• 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.

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  Isaac Newton

  Quoted in Christian Monitor, and Religious Intelligencer, 4 July 1812. An almost identical quotation by Newton, said to have been uttered "a little before he died," appears in Joseph Spence, Anecdotes, Observations, and Characters of Books and Men, published in 1820 but extant in manuscript form from around 1730. A paraphrase of Newton's words was printed in a note in a 1797 edition of TheWorks of Alexander Pope.

  3350

• 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.

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  Isaac Newton

  Science  

  "Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton". Book by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643, 1704.

  1685

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