“A Vulgar Mechanick 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.(from a letter dated 25 May, 1694)”

“For five years Isaac had been working eighteen hours a day.”

“If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants.”

“There is a reward structure in science that is very interesting: Our highest honors go to those who disprove the findings of the most revered among us. So Einstein is revered not just because he made so many fundamental contributions to science, but because he found an imperfection in the fundamental contribution of Isaac Newton.”

“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.”

“My powers are ordinary. Only my application brings me success.”

“Errors are not in the art but in the artificers.”

“Tact is the art of making a point without making an enemy.”

“A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.”

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

“I have a fundamental belief in the Bible as the Word of God, written by those who were inspired. I study the Bible daily.”