Responsibility

"Men build too many walls and not enough bridges."

"For I see not what there is desirable in public esteem, were I able to acquire & maintain it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline."

"It is inconceivable that inanimate brute matter should, without the mediation of something else which is not material, operate upon and affect other matter without mutual contact, as it must be, if gravitation in the sense of Epicurus, be essential and inherent in it. And this is one reason why I desired you would not ascribe innate gravity to me. That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything 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 competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it. Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws; but whether this agent be material or immaterial, I have left open to the consideration of my readers."

"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."

"A vulgar mechanic 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."

"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."

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

"Yet one thing secures us what ever betide, the scriptures assures us that the Lord will provide."

"Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth."

"You have to make the rules, not follow them."

"And to every action there is always an equal and opposite or contrary, reaction."

"This most beautiful system of the sun, planets and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being"

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

"No great discovery was ever made without a bold guess."

"Live your life as an Exclamation rather than an Explanation."

"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."

"The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite insane."

"What we know is a drop, what we don’t know is an ocean."

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

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

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

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

"If I have seen further than others, it is by standing upon the shoulders of giants."

"I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people."

"A vulgar mechanic 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."

"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."

"They who search after the Philosopher’s Stone are by their own rules obliged to a strict and religious life."

"For I see not what there is desirable in public esteem, were I able to acquire & maintain it. It would perhaps increase my acquaintance, the thing which I chiefly study to decline."

"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."

"I do not care what yew believe, nor does the Universe, know it, or no it not."

"Our virtues and our failings are inseparable, like force and matter. When they separate, man is no more."