Archimedes Quotes

Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.

Archimedes had stated, that given the force, any given weight might be moved; and even boasted that if there were another earth, by going into it he could remove this.

It is indeed a law of politics as well as of physics, that a body in action must overcome a body at rest.

When he utilizes combined energy, his fighting men become as it were like unto rolling logs or stones. For it is the nature of a log or stone to remain motionless on level ground, and to move when on a slope; if four-cornered, to come to a standstill, but if round-shaped to go rolling down.

Success goes thus invariably with a certain plus or positive power: an ounce of power must balance an ounce of weight.

Every body continues in its state of rest or uniform motion in a straight line, except insofar as it doesn't.

I like physics. I think it is the best science out of all three of them, because generally it's more useful. You learn about speed and velocity and time, and that's all clever stuff.

Acceleration is finite, I think according to some laws of physics.

Big doors swing on little hinges.

It's not magic! It's physics. The speed of the turn is what keeps you upright. It's like a spinning top.

A tree falls the way it leans.

The universe is composed of matter, and, as a system, is sustained by motion. Motion is not a property of matter, and without this motion the solar system could not exist.

A point of rest alone explains motion.

Heavy is the root of light.

It is the same with people as it is with riding a bike. Only when moving can one comfortably maintain one's balance.

You can't chop down a symmetry

Newton's great generalization, which he called the "third law of motion," was that "Action and reaction are always equal to each other;" and that law has been one of the most pregnant of all truths about the mystery of force;--one of the brightest windows through which modern eyes have looked into the world of Nature.

Functionally, a man is somewhat like a bicycle. A bicycle maintains its poise and equilibrium only so long as it's moving forward towards something.

Upon laying a weight in one of the scales, inscribed eternity, though I threw in that of time, prosperity, affliction, wealth, and poverty, which seemed very ponderous, they were not able to stir the opposite balance.

I am a figure skater, which helps me appreciate Newton's theory of mechanics.

Your center of mass is a place you cannot visit but you always carry with you. Like memories, it is part of life's baggage.

Two magnitudes whether commensurable or incommensurable, balance at distances reciprocally proportional to the magnitudes.

In nature things move violently to their place, and calmly in their place.

I know there's a balance, I see it when I swing past.

Weight is caused by one element being situated in another; and it moves by the shortest line towards its centre, not by its own choice, not because the centre draws it to itself, but because the other intervening element cannot withstand it.