The proper method for inquiring after the properties of things is to deduce them from experiments.

The best and safest method of philosophizing seems to be first to inquire diligently into the properties of things, and establishing those properties by experiments, and then to proceed more slowly to hypotheses for the explanation of them.

Hypotheses should be subservient only in explaining the properties of things but not assumed in determining them, unless so far as they may furnish experiments.

It is the weight, not numbers of experiments that is to be regarded.

God in the beginning formed matter in solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles, of such sizes and figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them.

A man may imagine things that are false, but he can only understand things that are true, for if the things be false, the apprehension of them is not understanding.