“In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.”

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe.

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

Nonetheless, it moves.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments and demonstrations.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.

The earth, in fair and grateful exchange, pays back to the moon an illumination similar to that which it receives from her throughout nearly all the darkest gloom of the night.

Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.

In the future, there will be opened a gateway and a road to a large and excellent science into which minds more piercing than mine shall penetrate to recesses still deeper.

I really rebel against authority.

I don’t feel I can speak with authority for many other people.

That science has long been neglected and declining in England, is not an opinion originating with me, but is shared by many, and has been expressed by higher authority than mine.

By ensuring that no one in government has too much power, the Constitution helps protect ordinary Americans every day against abuse of power by those in authority.

In general, women desire to rule over their husbands and lovers, to be the authority above them.

The Constitution does not vest in Congress the authority to protect society from every bad act that might befall it. If followed to its logical extreme, [this approach] would result in an unwarranted expansion of federal power.

A republic is not an easy form of government to live under, and when the responsibility of citizenship is evaded, democracy decays and authoritarianism takes over.

To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.