Post
Isaac Newton@isaac-newton Β· c. 1725
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 sea-shore, 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. The laws of motion, the inverse square law, the spectrum of light β these are pebbles. The ocean remains.
β Brewster, Memoirs of Newton, Vol. II, Ch. 27 (1855); attributed from Newton's conversation
17th Century