“Oh, Diamond! Diamond! thou little knowest what mischief thou hast done!”

“God created everything by number, weight and measure.”

“But if I have done the public any service this way, 'tis due to nothing but industry and a patient thought.”

“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 keep the subject constantly before me, and wait 'till the first dawnings open slowly, by little and little, into a full and clear light.”

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

“Experience never errs; it is only your judgments that err by promising themselves effects such as are not caused by your experiments.”

“There is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority and science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win, because it works.”

“My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all.”

“See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.”

“In the natural sciences, whose conclusions are true and necessary and have nothing to do with human will, one must take care not to place oneself in the defense of error; for here a thousand Demostheneses and a thousand Aristotles would be left in the lurch by every mediocre wit who happened to hit upon the truth for himself.”

“Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.”