Laws of Motion Quotes

Things fall apart, it's scientific.

When asked about which scientist he'd like to meet, Neil deGrasse Tyson said, "Isaac Newton. No question about it. The smartest person ever to walk the face of this earth. The man was connected to the universe in spooky ways. He discovered the laws of motion, the laws of gravity, the laws of optics. Then he turned 26.

One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn't fall.

Galileo had already made a significant beginning toward a knowledge of the law of motion. He discovered the law of inertia and the law of bodies falling freely in the gravitational field of the earth.

The birth of science as we know it arguably began with Isaac Newton's formulation of the laws of gravitation and motion. It is no exaggeration to say that physics was reborn in the early 20th-century with the twin revolutions of quantum mechanics and the theory of relativity.

Gravity is a mysterious carriage of the body invented to cover the defects of the mind.

I think I always wanted to go into physics. What always fascinated me about science was the desire to understand what underlies it all, and I think physics is basically the study of that.

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.

I am a figure skater, which helps me appreciate Newton's theory of mechanics.

About Newton: Nature to him was an open book, whose letters he could read without effort.

Principles of motion take precedence over sequence of motion.

Mr Newton, a fellow of our College, and very young, being but the second year master of arts; but of an extraordinary genius and proficiency.

The movement of comets is part of the ordinary works of nature which, without regard to the happiness or misery of mankind, are transported from one part of the heavens to another by virtue of the general laws of motion.

Sir Isaac Newton gave the extraterrestrials their biggest shot in the arm when he embraced the infinite universe as the basis for his hugely influential system of physics. Even so, the aliens of the early modern period remained creatures of philosophy rather than science.

The stone that is thrown into the air is none the worse for falling down, and none the better for going up.

Newton did not know what happened to the apple, and I can prove this when the next eclipse comes.

Mr Hooke sent, in his next letter [to Sir Isaac Newton] the whole of his Hypothesis, scil that the gravitation was reciprocall to the square of the distance: ... This is the greatest Discovery in Nature that ever was since the World's Creation. It was never so much as hinted by any man before. I wish he had writt plainer, and afforded a little more paper.

When Newton saw an apple fall, he found In that slight startle from his contemplation- 'Tis said (for I'll not answer above ground For any sage's creed or calculation)- A mode of proving that the earth turn'd round In a most natural whirl, called 'gravitation'; And this is the sole mortal who could grapple, Since Adam, with a fall, or with an apple.

Every description of natural processes must be based on ideas which have been introduced and defined by the classical theory.

To the Master's honor all must turn, each in its track, without a sound, forever tracing Newton's ground.

But in physics I soon learned to scent out the paths that led to the depths, and to disregard everything else, all the many things that clutter up the mind, and divert it from the essential. The hitch in this was, of course, the fact that one had to cram all this stuff into one's mind for the examination, whether one liked it or not.

To derive two or three general Principles of Motion from Phænomena, and afterwards to tell us how the Properties and Actions of all corporeal Things follow from those manifest Principles, would be a very great step in Philosophy.

Very few of us can now place ourselves in the mental condition in which even such philosophers as the great Descartes were involved in the days before Newton had announced the true laws of the motion of bodies.

And I was crying for gravity. It had sent me down the stairs, and I'd thought that meant something, but maybe it was just the direction that all things tend to flow.