Isaac Newton: Other

Isaac Newton was British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics. Explore interesting quotes on other.
Isaac Newton: 342 quotes204 likes

“And so, supposing that light impinging on a refracting or reflecting ethereal superficies puts it into a vibrating motion, that physical superficies being by the perpetual applause of rays always kept in a vibrating motion, and the ether therein continually expanded and compressed by turns, if a ray of light impinge on it when it is much compressed, I suppose it is then too dense and stiff to let the ray through, and so reflects it; but the rays that impinge on it at other times, when it is either expanded by the interval between two vibrations or not too much compressed and condensed, go through and are refracted.”

Isaac Newton

"Hypothesis explaining the Properties of Light" (1675)

“If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me, I had never made anything.”

Isaac Newton

This first appears in the Isaac Newton : A Biography (1934), citing unpublished papers by John Conduitt reporting an anecdote of an occassion where Conduitt asked Newton where he obtained the tools to make his reflecting telescope. Newton is said to have laughed and replied, "If I had stayed for other people to make my tools and things for me I had never made anything of it."
Disputed

“Doth not this Æthereal Medium in passing out of Water, Glass, Crystal, and other compact and dense Bodies into empty Spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the Rays of Light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve Lines? And doth not the gradual condensation of this Medium extend to some distance from the Bodies, and thereby cause the Inflexions of the Rays of Light, which pass by the edges of dense Bodies, at some distance from the Bodies?”

Isaac Newton book Opticks, or a Treatise of the Reflections, Refractions, Inflections and Colours of Light

Query 20
Opticks (1704)

“Idolatry is a more dangerous crime because it is apt by the authority of Kings & under very specious pretenses to insinuate it self into mankind. Kings being apt to enjoyn the honour of their dead ancestors: & it seeming very plausible to honour the souls of Heroes & Saints & to believe that they can heare us & help us & are mediators between God & man & reside & act principally in the temples & statues dedicated to their honour & memory? And yet this being against the principal part of religion is in scripture condemned & detested above all other crimes. The sin consists first in omitting the service of the true God.”

Isaac Newton

Of Idolatry
A short Schem of the true Religion

“The second and third Empires, represented by the Bear and Leopard, are again represented by the Ram and He-Goat; but with this difference, that the Ram represents the kingdoms of the Medes and Persians from the beginning of the four Empires, and the Goat represents the kingdom of the Greeks to the end of them. By this means, under the type of the Ram and He-Goat, the times of all the four Empires are again described: I lifted up mine eyes, saith Daniel, and saw, and behold there stood before the river [Ulai] a Ram which had two horns, and the two horns were high, but one was higher than the other, and the higher came up last.”

Isaac Newton

Vol. I, Ch. 9: Of the Kingdoms Represented in Daniel by the Ram and He-Goat
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)

“To every action there is always opposed an equal reaction; or, the mutual actions of two bodies upon each other are always equal, and directed to contrary parts.”

Isaac Newton book Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica

Laws of Motion, III
Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica (1687)