I can measure the motion of bodies but I cannot measure human folly.
Interpretation
Newton acknowledges the limits of scientific measurement in understanding human behavior.
In this quote, Isaac Newton reflects on the distinction between the measurable elements of the physical world and the complexities of human behavior. While he is confident in his ability to quantify the laws of motion, he acknowledges a fundamental limitation in trying to quantify the irrational and unpredictable aspects of human nature, suggesting that folly cannot be accurately measured or categorized like physical laws.
In practice
During a lecture on the limitations of science, one might quote Newton to illustrate the unpredictability of human decisions.
The best and safest way of philosophising seems to be, first to enquire diligently into the properties of things, and to establish those properties by experiences [experiments] and then to proceed slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them. For hypotheses should be employed only in explaining the properties of things, but not assumed in determining them; unless so far as they may furnish experiments.
Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but my greatest friend is truth.
His epitaph: Who, by vigor of mind almost divine, the motions and figures of the planets, the paths of comets, and the tides of the seas first demonstrated.
And from true lordship it follows that the true God is living, intelligent, and powerful; from the other perfections, that he is supreme, or supremely perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, he endures from eternity to eternity; and he is present from infinity to infinity; he rules all things, and he knows all things that happen or can happen.
My Design in this Book is not to explain the Properties of Light by Hypotheses, but to propose and prove them by Reason and Experiments: In order to which, I shall premise the following Definitions and Axioms.
It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.
Into a world unknown,-the corner-stone of a nation!
If something is right (or wrong) for us, itβs right (or wrong) for others. It follows that if itβs wrong for Cuba, Nicaragua, Haiti, and a long list of others to bomb Washington and New York, then itβs wrong for Rumsfeld to bomb Afghanistan (on much flimsier pretexts), and he should be brought before war crimes trials.
It is perhaps the most characteristic feature of the intellectual that he judges new ideas not by their specific merits but by the readiness with which they fit into his general conceptions, into the picture of the world which he regards as modern or advanced.
You cannot reshape human nature without mutilating human beings.
Asset forfeiture is a mockery of the Bill of Rights. There is no presumption of innocence, no need to prove you guilty (or even charge you with a crime), no right to a jury trial, no right to confront your accuser, no right to a court-appointed attorney (even if the government has just stolen all your money), and no right to compensation for the property that's been taken.
The supreme mystery of despotism, its prop and stay, is to keep men in a state of deception, and with the specious title of religion to cloak the fear by which they must be held in check, so that they will fight for their servitude as if for salvation.
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