Newton Quotes - Page 5

• Some day the laws of glamour must be discovered, because they are so important that the world would be wiser now if Sir Isaac Newton had been hit on the head, not by an apple, but by a young lady.

  Booth Tarkington

  Law, Apples, Important

  Newton Booth Tarkington (2015). “The Magnificent Ambersons”, p.42, Booklassic

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• This is how great intellectual breakthroughs usually happen in practice. It is rarely the isolated genius having a eureka moment alone in the lab. Nor is it merely a question of building on precedent, of standing on the shoulders of giants, in Newton's famous phrase. Great breakthroughs are closer to what happens in a flood plain: a dozen separate tributaries converge, and the rising waters lift the genius high enough that he or she can see around the conceptual obstructions of the age.

  Steven Johnson

  Practice, Water, Intellectual

  Steven Johnson (2006). “The Ghost Map: The Story of London's Most Terrifying Epidemic--and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World”, p.146, Penguin

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• Newton expected no money from establishing his originality but rather desired recognition for his excellence.

  Tyler Cowen

  Excellence, Recognition, Originality

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• So, did you stab Edward Cullen with a pencil or what? I've never seen him act like that.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Twilight, Pencils

  "Twilight". Book by Stephenie Meyer, October 5, 2005.

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• A hundred yards away, Mike Newton was lowering Bella's limp body to the sidewalk. She slumped unresponsively against the wet concrete, her skin chalky as a corpse. I almost took the door off the car.

  Stephenie Meyer

  Doors, Car, Skins

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• What’s your name, lad?” “Newton. Newton Pulsifer.” “LUCIFER? What’s that you say? Are ye of the Spawn of Darkness, a tempting beguiling creature from the pit, wanton limbs steaming from the fleshpots of Hades, in tortured and lubricious thrall to your Stygian and hellish masters?” “That’s Pulsifer,” explained Newton. “With a P. I don’t know about the other stuff, but we come from Surrey.” The voice on the phone sounded vaguely disappointed.

  Neil Gaiman

  Phones, Names, Voice

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• Now, since the time of Newton there had been a debate about whether light was a wave - that is, a traveling disturbance in some background medium - or a particle, which travels regardless of the presence of a background medium. The observation of Maxwell that electromagnetic waves must exist and that their speed was identical to that of light ended the debate: light was an electromagnetic wave.

  Lawrence M. Krauss

  Light, Debate, Speed

  "The Physics of Star Trek". Book by Lawrence M. Krauss, 1995.

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• Newton took no exercise, indulged in no amusements, and worked incessantly, often spending eighteen or nineteen hours out of the twenty-four in writing.

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Hard Work, Writing, Exercise

  W. W. Rouse Ball (2012). “A Short Account of the History of Mathematics”, p.287, Courier Corporation

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• It takes a Newton to forge a Newton. What man could have fabricated a Jesus? None but a Jesus.

  Theodore Parker

  Christian, Jesus, Men

  Theodore Parker (1842). “A Discourse of Matters Pertaining to Religion”, p.363

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• Notwithstanding all that has been discovered since Newton's time, his saying that we are little children picking up pretty pebbles on the beach while the whole ocean lies before us unexplored remains substantially as true as ever, and will do so though we shovel up the pebbles by steam shovels and carry them off in carloads.

  Charles Sanders Peirce

  Beach, Children, Lying

  Charles Sanders Peirce (1974). “Collected Papers”, p.47, Harvard University Press

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• Socrates said, our only knowledge was
  "To know that nothing could be known;" a pleasant
  Science enough, which levels to an ass
  Each Man of Wisdom, future, past, or present.
  Newton, (that Proverb of the Mind,) alas!
  Declared, with all his grand discoveries recent,
  That he himself felt only "like a youth
  Picking up shells by the great Ocean-Truth."

  Lord Byron

  Ocean, Past, Men

  Lord Byron (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Lord Byron (Illustrated)”, p.2079, Delphi Classics

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• The history of men of science has one peculiar advantage, as it shows the importance of little things in producing great results. Smeaton learned his principle of constructing a lighthouse, by noticing the trunk of a tree to be diminished from a curve to a cyclinder ... and Newton, turning an old box into a water-clock, or the yard of a house into a sundial, are examples of those habits of patient observation which scientific biography attractively recommends.

  Robert Aris Willmott

  Science, Men, Curves

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• I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe, and especially the nature of man, and to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for the human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton. Let each man hope and believe what he can.

  Charles Darwin

  Dog, Believe, Science

  The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Volume II C. Darwin to Asa Gray May 22nd [1860] (p. 105)

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• What a deep faith in the rationality of the structure of the world and what a longing to understand even a small glimpse of the reason revealed in the world there must have been in Kepler and Newton to enable them to unravel the mechanism of the heavens in long years of lonely work!

  Albert Einstein

  Lonely, Science, Years

  Albert Einstein (2013). “Einstein on Politics: His Private Thoughts and Public Stands on Nationalism, Zionism, War, Peace, and the Bomb”, p.234, Princeton University Press

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• Throughout his life Newton must have devoted at least as much attention to chemistry and theology as to mathematics.

  W. W. Rouse Ball

  Science, Attention, Chemistry

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• All Science is necessarily prophetic, so truly so, that the power of prophecy is the test, the infallible criterion, by which any presumed Science is ascertained to be actually & verily science. The Ptolemaic Astronomy was barely able to prognosticate a lunar eclipse; with Kepler and Newton came Science and Prophecy.

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge

  Science, Kepler, Tests

  Samuel Taylor Coleridge, H. J. Jackson, Kathleen Coburn, Bart Keith Winer (1992). “Collected Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Marginalia (5 v.)”, Bollingen

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• No one can read the history of astronomy without perceiving that Copernicus, Newton, Laplace, are not new men, or a new kind of men, but that Thales, Anaximenes, Hipparchus, Empodocles, Aristorchus, Pythagorus, Oenipodes, had anticipated them.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Men, History, Perception

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1982). “Emerson: Selected Essays”, p.350, Penguin

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• Nothing is so much coveted by a young man as the reputation of being a genius; and many seem to feel that the want of patience for laborious application and deep research is such a mark of genius as cannot be mistaken: while a real genius, like Sir Isaac Newton, with great modesty says, that the great and only difference between his mind and the minds of others consisted solely in his having more patience.

  John Todd

  Real, Men, Differences

  John Todd (1856). “The student's manual: designed”, p.23

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• Just as the line of astronomical thinkers from Copernicus to Newton had destroyed the old astronomy, in which the earth was the center, and the Almighty sitting above the firmament the agent in moving the heavenly bodies about it with his own hands, so now a race of biological thinkers had destroyed the old idea of a Creator minutely contriving and fashioning all animals to suit the needs and purposes of man.

  Andrew Dickson White

  Moving, Animal, Men

  Andrew Dickson White (2012). “A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom: From Creation to the Victory of Scientific and Literary Methods”, p.49, Transaction Publishers

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• For example: (1) As if governed by Newton's First Law of Motion, an institution will resist any change in its current direction; (2) Just as work expands to fill available time, corporate projects or acquisitions will materialize to soak up available funds; (3) Any business craving of the leader, however foolish, will be quickly supported by detailed rate-of-return and strategic studies prepared by his troops; and (4) The behavior of peer companies, whether they are expanding, acquiring, setting executive compensation or whatever, will be mindlessly imitated.

  Warren Buffett

  Law, Leader, Peers

  Warren Buffett (2009). “Warren Buffett on Business: Principles from the Sage of Omaha”, p.151, John Wiley & Sons

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• Ever since Sir Isaac Newton's times, scientists have worked in the same sort of way: They show a great respect for experiment and observation, They don't cherry pick data, They take a skeptical approach to what they do. And then scientists work together to get a consensus as to what should be believed And that generates very reliable knowledge and that reliable knowledge drives innovation

  Paul Nurse

  Data, Innovation, Working Together

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• If we except the great name of Newton (and the exception is one that the great Gauss himself would have been delighted to make) it is probable that no mathematician of any age or country has ever surpassed Gauss in the combination of an abundant fertility of invention with an absolute vigorousness in demonstration.

  Henry John Stephen Smith

  Country, Names, Age

  Henry John Stephen Smith (1965). “Collected Mathematical Papers”, p.74, American Mathematical Soc.

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• Accelerometrics is a cool new discipline. Newton and Galileo would love it.

  Philippe Kahn

  Discipline

  "Accelerometrics: The Art of Motion Sensing". www.fullpower.com. July 10, 2008.

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• To estimate the value of Newton's discoveries, or the delight communicated by Shakespeare and Milton, by the price at which their works have sold, would be but a poor measure of the degree in which they have elevated and enchanted their country; nor would it be less grovelling and incongruous to estimate the benefit which the country has derived from the Revolution of 1688, by the pay of the soldiers, and all other payments concerned in effecting it.

  Thomas Malthus

  Country, Discovery, Soldier

  Thomas Robert Malthus (1836). “Principles of political economy considered with a view to their practical application”, p.49

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• I would trade all the advantages of humanity to be a fly on the wall when Franklin and Jefferson discussed liberty, Lenin and Trotsky revolution, Newton and Halley the shape of the universe, or when Darwin entertained Huxley and Lyell at Down.

  Stephen Jay Gould

  Wall, Humanity, Liberty

  Stephen Jay Gould (1987). “Time's Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time”, p.64, Harvard University Press

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