You have to make the rules, not follow them
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the importance of taking initiative and creating one's own path rather than simply adhering to established norms.
Isaac Newton's quote suggests that true innovation and progress come from the courage to establish new principles and challenge existing conventions. By stating 'You have to make the rules, not follow them,' Newton encourages individuals to embrace their creativity, think independently, and take charge of their own destinies, rather than being passive followers in a world shaped by others.
In practice
In a motivational speech about entrepreneurship, this quote can inspire budding business owners to innovate.
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.
When you are completely free from boundaries, you don't have to have a huge number of material things. You already own something far more precious. You own yourself.
No man burdens his mind with small matters unless he has some very good reason for doing so.
Every time you reject yourself, you idealize others
If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. ... [J]ust a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.
Until you have lost your reputation, you never realize what a burden it was or what freedom really is.
You don't need to climb a mountain to know that it's high.
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