Newton's Humility Before Knowledge
Story★★★★“I do not know,” confessed the great Sir Isaac Newton a short while before his death, “what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore of knowledge; 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 point
Newton's humble reflection near death—he felt like a boy finding pebbles on a shore while an ocean of truth lay undiscovered. A vivid and memorable meditation on human limitation and the vastness of knowledge.
Audience
Adults
Tone
Humbling · Inspiring
To tell aloud
under a minute · 69 words