From the Great Quotes Department:
"If I have ever made any valuable discoveries, it has been owing more to patient attention, than to any other talent." –Isaac Newton
Who was Isaac Newton?
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I rather like the cartoon of Newton under the apple tree since it illustrates his observation that great discoveries owe as much (if not more) to patient attention as they do to any inherent genius on the part of the observer, but I thought I’d better include a more lifelike image as well.
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
View all posts by Jimmy Akin
Nice quote from a horribly anti-Catholic person who persecuted Our Lord and His Church. Newton rejected the Trinity, trapped Catholics and charged them with conspiracy, wrote anti-Catholic tracs to anyone who would listen in positions of authority.
Yeah he was anti-Catholic.
True story: His students couldn’t understand what he wrote so by the end of the year not one of them went to class. And you know what Newton did? He lectured anyways, to an empty classroom.
Wanna know how much a Newton weighs? About the same as an apple. How do you remember this? Well his laws of gravity got started when he wondered why an apple falls (or so the story goes). Just think: Newton = apple!
Gee I’m a science geek. Lol.
Suscipe, do you have sources for those charges? Yes, Newton was anti-Catholic, but to say he persecuted the Church is, to the best of my knowledge, taking things a bit far. The fact of the matter is that the religious atmosphere in 17th century England was especially tense, and nearly everyone was persecuted at one point or another.
Newton’s own views were too unorthodox by the standards of the Catholic Church as well as any protestant denomination of any importance for him to publish much in the way of religious writings (for example, a treatise he wrote arguing that the portion of 1 John 5:7-8 often offered as direct scriptural support for the Trinity was a later addition to the text, a view now accepted by most scholars, was not published until nearly three decades after his death).
I’m curious where you find evidence that Newton persecuted Catholics and sent anti-Catholic tracts to authorities.
“Nice quote from a horribly anti-Catholic person who persecuted Our Lord and His Church. Newton rejected the Trinity, trapped Catholics and charged them with conspiracy, wrote anti-Catholic tracs to anyone who would listen in positions of authority.”
Suscipe, the point of these quotes is not to endorse every word or action by the person quoted. In the original “Quote of the Day” post, I explained the intent as follows:
“While surfing the Internet, I stumbled across a great quote, which seems to say so much more than it’s speaker originally intended. Every so often, as I find more quotes that seem almost prophetic in nature, I’ll share them here.”
Just because people who are or were anti-Catholic are wrongheaded in their views of the Church does not mean that they never said anything worth repeating and remembering.
It is possible to find profound spiritual quotes from Emperor Marcus Aurelius, a model philosopher-king but also a terrible persecutor of the early Christians.
Tolkien’s students didn’t understand him, either. Although in his case, it was more the mumbled and whispered lecturing….