“Also partially quoted in Sir Sidney Lee (ed.), The Dictionary of National Biography Vol.40”
#physics
20 quotes
“Biographia Britannica: Or the Lives of the Most Eminent Persons who Have Flourished in Great Britain from the Earliest Ages Down to the Present Times, Volume 5”
“The Theology of Isaac Newton’s Principia Mathematica : A Preliminary Survey ,”
“1. Fidelity & Allegiance sworn to the King is only such a fidelity and obedience as is due to him by the law of the land; for were that faith and allegiance more than what the law requires, we would swear ourselves slaves , and the King absolute; whereas, by the law, we are free men, notwithstanding those Oaths. 2. When , therefore, the obligation by the law to fidelity and allegiance ceases, that by the Oath also ceases ... Letter to Dr. Covel Feb. 21, (1688”
“Bullialdus wrote that all force respecting the Sun as its center & depending on matter must be reciprocally in a duplicate ratio of the distance from the center. Letter to Edmund Halley (June 20, 1686) quoted in I. Bernard Cohen and George E. Smith , ed.s, The Cambridge Companion to Newton (2002) p. 204”
“I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [5 February 1676 ( O.S. )]”
“Paraphrases: If I have seen further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants. If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of giants.”
“Bernard of Chartres used to say that we [the Moderns] are like dwarves perched on the shoulders of giants [the Ancients], and thus we are able to see more and farther than the latter. And this is not at all because of the acuteness of our sight or the stature of our body, but because we are carried aloft and elevated by the magnitude of the giants.”
“This is a variation on a much older adage, which Roger Bacon attributed to Aristotle : Amicus Plato sed magis amica veritas . Bacon was perhaps paraphrasing a statement in the Nicomachean Ethics : Where both are friends, it is right to prefer truth.”
“These are notes in Latin that Newton wrote to himself that he titled: Quaestiones Quaedam Philosophicae [Certain Philosophical Questions]”
“Does the inertia of a body depend upon its energy content?”
“It followed from the special theory of relativity that mass and energy are both but different manifestations of the same thing”
“If a body gives off the energy L in the form of radiation, its mass diminishes by L/c².”
“Opening of a letter to his friend Conrad Habicht in which he describes his four revolutionary Annus Mirabilis papers (18 or 25 May 1905) Doc. 27”
“Lieber Habicht! / Es herrscht ein weihevolles Stillschweigen zwischen uns, so daß es mir fast wie eine sündige Entweihung vorkommt, wenn ich es jetzt durch ein wenig bedeutsames Gepappel unterbreche... / Was machen Sie denn, Sie eingefrorener Walfisch, Sie getrocknetes, eingebüchstes Stück Seele...? Dear Habicht, / Such a solemn air of silence has descended between us that I almost feel as if I am committing a sacrilege when I break it now with some inconsequential babble... / What are you up to, you frozen whale, you smoked, dried, canned piece of soul...?”
“Letter to Jost Winteler (July 8th, 1901), quoted in The Private Lives of Albert Einstein by Roger Highfields and Paul Carter (1993), p. 79 . Einstein had been annoyed that Paul Drude , editor of Annalen der Physik , had dismissed some criticisms Einstein made of Drude's electron theory of metals.”
“Autoritätsdusel ist der größte Feind der Wahrheit. Blind obedience to authority is the greatest enemy of truth.”
“Mes Projets d'Avenir”
“Un homme heureux est trop content du présent pour trop se soucier de l'avenir. A happy man is too satisfied with the present to dwell too much on the future.”
“❝Everything should be made simple as possible but no simpler.❞ Repeated throughout his life, see: Quote Investigator”