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.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the existence and attributes of God, portraying Him as the ultimate being with supreme intelligence and power.
In this quote, Isaac Newton reflects on the nature of God as the ultimate authority and perfect being who is characterized by properties such as intelligence, omnipotence, and omniscience. He argues that the concept of true lordship inherently leads to the understanding of God as eternal and infinite, ruling and knowing all that exists and is conceivable. Newton's viewpoint suggests a philosophical inquiry into the divine and its relationship to the universe, emphasizing the theological implications of God's supremacy and perfect nature.
In practice
During a discussion on the nature of divinity, one might say, 'As Newton indicates, God is supreme and perfect in all aspects.'
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.
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.
Poetry is a kind of ingenious nonsense.
The body is an instrument which only gives off music when it is used as a body. Always an orchestra, and just as music traverses walls, so sensuality traverses the body and reaches up to ecstasy.
If people reach perfection they vanish, you know.
In those days, our Declaration of Independence was held sacred by all, and thought to include all; but now, to aid in the making the bondage of the negro universal and eternal, it is assailed, and sneered at, and construed, and hawked at, and torn, till, if its framers could rise from their graves, they could not at all recognize it.
What leads us astray is confusing more choices with more control. Because it is not clear that the more choices you have the more in control you feel. We have more choices than we've ever had before.
The stupider the peasant, the better the horse understands him.
We are empty shells if we do not possess, if we do not fill our life with furniture, with music, with knowledge, with this or that. And that shell makes a lot of noise, and that noise we call living, and with that we are satisfied.
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