“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 you, than to explain all things by conjecture without making sure of any thing.”

— Isaac Newton

Statement from unpublished notes for the Preface to Opticks (1704) quoted in Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1983) by Richard S. Westfall, p. 643

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Oct. 1, 2023. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the 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 …" by Isaac Newton?

Isaac Newton photo

Isaac Newton171

British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern c… 1643–1727

Related quotes

“Rules for Definitions. I. Not to undertake to define any of the things so well known of themselves that the clearer terms cannot be had to explain them. II. Not to leave any terms that are at all obscure or ambiguous without definition. III. Not to employ in the definition of terms any words but such as are perfectly known or already explained.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

“They will explain themselves — as all poems should do without any comment.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Letter to George Keats (1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“Some things in life are too complicated to explain in any language.”

Haruki Murakami book Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

Source: Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage

“What is the one thing more than any other thing that makes one person different from any other person?”

Douglas Coupland Microserfs

Microserfs (1995)

“Rules necessary for definitions. Not to leave any terms at all obscure or ambiguous without definition; Not to employ in definitions any but terms perfectly known or already explained.”

Blaise Pascal (1623–1662) French mathematician, physicist, inventor, writer, and Christian philosopher

The Art of Persuasion

“Would not all we mean by “communication between mind and mind” be provided for if we suppose that common knowledge comes about, not from our explaining things to one another, but from things explaining themselves in the same terms to us all? Accepting the object as its own interpreter, as its own “medium of communication,” do we not begin to understand what is utterly dark on any other view, how it comes to pass that the resulting knowledge is a common possession?”

L. P. Jacks (1860–1955) British educator, philosopher, and Unitarian minister

The Usurpation Of Language (1910)

“A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.”

Oliver Herford (1863–1935) American writer

Gilbert Keith Chesterton, as per Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34.
Misattributed

“A man must love a thing very much if he not only practices it without any hope of fame and money, but even practices it without any hope of doing it well.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

As quoted in Mackay's The Harvest of a Quiet Eye, A Selection of Scientific Quotations (1977), p. 34

“If he had learned one thing as a Soldier it was that any decision, even a bad one, was better than none.”

Bernard Cornwell (1944) British writer

Lieutenant Richard Sharpe, p. 130
Sharpe (Novel Series), Sharpe's Rifles (1988)

“any live man is better than any dead man but no live or dead man is very much better than any other live or dead man”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Related topics