I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true.
- Topic: Imagination, Truth
- Photo: Jeffrey Benjamin
More Quotes from Isaac Newton
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.
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 seashore, 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.
Every body continues in its state of rest, or of uniform motion in a right line, unless it is compelled to change that state by forces impressed upon it.
To me there has never been a higher source of earthly honor or distinction than that connected with advances in science.
Plato is my friend; Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
The change in motion is proportional to the motive force impressed; and is made in the direction of the right line in which that force is impressed.
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Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively.
The use of traveling is to regulate imagination by reality, and instead of thinking how things may be, to see them as they are.
The primary imagination I hold to be the living power and prime agent of all human perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I am.
Music gives a soul to the universe, wings to the mind, flight to the imagination and life to everything.
It may easily come to pass that a vain man may become proud and imagine himself pleasing to all when he is in reality a universal nuisance.
To raise new questions, new possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires creative imagination and marks real advance in science.
A man, to carry on a successful business, must have imagination. He must see things as in a vision, a dream of the whole thing. A man can cultivate this faculty only by an appreciation for the finer things in life.
Re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem, and have the richest fluency, not only in its words, but in the silent lines of its lips and face, and between the lashes of your eyes, and in every motion and joint of your body.
For truth is precious and divine—too rich a perl for carnal swine.
Only when we realize that there is no eternal, unchanging truth or absolute truth can we arouse in ourselves a sense of intellectual responsibility.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
People think that a liar gains a victory over his victim. What I've learned is that a lie is an act of self-abdication, because one surrenders one's reality to the person to whom one lies, making that person one's master, condemning oneself from then on to faking the sort of reality that person's view requires to be faked.
The truth is always exciting. Speak it, then. Life is dull without it.
The truth is not wonderful enough to suit the newspapers; so they enlarge upon it and invent ridiculous embellishments.
History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right.
The truth is incontrovertible. Malice may attack it, ignorance may deride it, but in the end, there it is.
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
No matter how outrageous a lie may be, it will be accepted if stated loudly enough and often enough.
The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.
