Gravity Quotes
More Gravity Quotes
Remember, just because Microsoft can do something, doesn't mean you can. Microsoft makes their own gravity. Normal rules don't apply to them.
joel spolsky— "Our .NET Strategy"
The snow in the mountains was melting and Bunny had been dead for several weeks before we came to understand the gravity of our situation.
Donna Tartt— 1992 The Secret History.
There are some oddities in the perspective with which we see the world. The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be, but we have done various things over intellectual history to slowly correct some of our misapprehensions.
douglas adams— Speech at Digital Biota 2, Cambridge, UK, (1998)
Cunning is only the mimic of discretion, and may pass upon weak men in the same manner as vivacity is often mistaken for wit, and gravity for wisdom.
joseph addison— No. 225. (The Tatler (1711–1714))
Our maritime cluster today is vibrant, comprising more than 130 international ship groups and more than 5000 maritime companies across the full range of industry. We are well positioned to serve as a gateway to Asia, and provide a platform for businesses to benefit from the shifting of centre of gravity to this region
— Ms Josephine Teo, Senior Minister of State for Finance and Transport, quoted on Today Online.com, "Government committed to supporting Singapore’s maritime hub status", March 19, 2014.
I am governed by the pull of the sentence as the pull of a fabric isgoverned by gravity.
— Quoted in Louis Untermeyer 'Five Famous Poetesses', in Ladies' Home Journal, May1964.
None need a guide, by sure attraction led, And strong impulsive gravity of head.
Alexander Pope— 1742 The Dunciad, bk.4, l.75-6.
I try in my prints to testify that we live in a beautiful and orderly world, not in a chaos without norms, even though that is how it sometimes appears. My subjects are also often playful: I cannot refrain from demonstrating the nonsensicalness of some of what we take to be irrefutable certainties. It is, for example, a pleasure to deliberately mix together objects of two and three dimensions, surface and spatial relationships, and to make fun of gravity.
m. c. escher— From Escher on Escher: exploring the infinite (1989) edited by J. W. Vermeulen and H. N. Abrams.
"He who controls the weather, will control the world. He who controls gravity, will control the universe. He who controls time, will never be around."
thomas frey— Source: DaVinci Institute - Quotable Quotes
It's not hard to stand behind one's successes. But to accept responsibility for one's failures... that is devishly hard! But only thence does the road lead... to a radically new insight into the mysterious gravity of my existence as an uncertain enterprise and to its transcendental meaning.
václav havel— As quoted in "Václav Havel: Heir to a Spiritual Legacy" by Richard L. Stanger in Christian Century (11 April 1990)
Cornelia would not be altogether surprised if she saw the grazing cow start tap dancing, lap dancing, or whatever quantum gravity might cause cows to do.
joão magueijo— pg. 249 (Faster than the Speed of Light)
His smile is sweetened by his gravity.
george eliot— Book 1 (The Spanish Gypsy (1868))
Macavity, Macavity, there's no on like Macavity, He's broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
— Macavity: The Mystery Cat
As to your Newton , I confess I do not understand his void and his gravity; I admit he has demonstrated the movement of the heavenly bodies with more exactitude than his forerunners; but you will admit it is an absurdity to maintain the existence of Nothing.
Frederick II of Prussia— Letters of Voltaire and Frederick the Great (New York: Brentano's, 1927), trans. Richard Aldington, letter 221 from Frederick to Voltaire (1777-11-25)
[H]istorical science is not worse, more restricted, or less capable of achieving firm conclusions because experiment, prediction, and subsumption under invariant laws of nature do not represent its usual working methods. The sciences of history use a different mode of explanation, rooted in the comparative and observational richness in our data. We cannot see a past event directly, but science is usually based on inference, not unvarnished observation (you don't see electrons, gravity, or black holes either).
stephen jay gould— p. 279 (Wonderful Life (1989))
To physicists such as myself, the huge amount of invisible dark matter needed to make Einstein's theory fit the astrophysical data is reason enough for exploring modified gravity theories.
john moffat— Chapter 9, Other Alternative Gravity Theories, p. 143
A large part of the relativity community is in denial - refusing even to contemplate the idea that black holes may not exist in nature, or seriously consider the idea that any kind of new matter such as the new putative dark energy can play a fundamental role in gravity theory.
john moffat— Chapter 14, Do Black Holes Exist In Nature?, p. 204
Giving up Einstein's theory of gravity is simply unacceptable to many in the community. It may take a new generation of physicists to view the evidence with unclouded eyes.
john moffat— Epilogue, p. 221
I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; for whatever is not deduced from the phenomena is to be called a hypothesis, and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy.
isaac newton— Letter to Robert Hooke (15 February 1676) [5 February 1676 (O.S.)]
" the gravity of a substance depends not on the amount of its weight, but on its nature. "
vitruvius— Chapter VIII, Sec. 3
There are necessities and impossibilities in reality which do not obtain in fiction , any more than the law of gravity to which we are subject controls what is represented in a picture. ... It is the same with pure good; for a necessity as strong as gravity condemns man to evil and forbids him any good, or only within the narrowest limits and laboriously obtained and soiled and adulterated with evil. ... The simplicity which makes the fictional good something insipid and unable to hold the attention becomes, in the real good, an unfathomable marvel.
Simone Weil— “Morality and literature,” pp. 160-161
There is no good reason why we should fear the future , but there is every reason why we should face it seriously, neither hiding from ourselves the gravity of the problems before us nor fearing to approach these problems with the unbending, unflinching purpose to solve them aright.
theodore roosevelt— In his Inaugural Address (1905)
You could not liberate a stone if there were no law of gravity for where will the stone go, once it is quarried?
— Antoine de Saint Exupéry, Flight to Arras (1942), Ch. 23
Analysis and natural philosophy owe their most important discoveries to this fruitful means, which is called induction. Newton was indebted to it for his theorem of the binomial and the principle of universal gravity.
— Laplace, A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, [Truscott and Emory] (New York 1902), p. 176.
" the gravity of a substance depends not on the amount of its weight, but on its nature. "
— Chapter VIII, Sec. 3 (Book VII)
Like gravity, karma is so basic we often don't even notice it.
Sakyong mipham— Ruling Your World: Ancient Strategies for Modern Life
gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth.
johannes kepler— As quoted by Bryant, ibid., pp. 35–36
As Attraction is stronger in small Magnets than in great ones in proportion to their Bulk, and gravity is greater in the Surfaces of small Planets than in those of great ones in proportion to their bulk, and small Bodies are agitated much more by electric attraction than great ones; so the smallness of the Rays of Light may contribute very much to the power of the Agent by which they are refracted.
isaac newton— Query 21
