| The Columbia World of Quotations. 1996. |
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| NUMBER: | 41420 |
| QUOTATION: | I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me. |
| ATTRIBUTION: | Isaac Newton (1642–1727), British physicist, mathematician, universal genius. Memoirs of Newton, v. II, ch. 27, ed. Brewster (1855).
Perhaps the most famous bit of Newton on Newton. |
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| | | The Columbia World of Quotations. Copyright © 1996 Columbia University Press. |
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