Pierre Louis Maupertuis

“Nature always uses the simplest means to accomplish its effects.”

“We cannot doubt that all things are regulated by a supreme Being, who, while he has imprinted on matter forces which show his power, has destined it to execute effects which mark his wisdom... Let us calculate the motion of bodies, but let us also consult the designs of the Intelligence which makes them move.”

“The most beautiful discoveries since the Renaissance, indeed since the beginnings of all science, are the laws governing light, whether moving through a uniform medium, or being reflected from an opaque surface, or changing direction upon entering another transparent medium.”

“Now I have to define what I mean by "action". When a material body is transported from one point to another, it involves an action that depends on the speed of the body and on the distance it travels. However, the action is neither the speed nor the distance taken separately; rather, it is proportional to the sum of the distances travelled multiplied each by the speed at which they were travelled.”

“It is interesting to note that Newton was not impressed by Descartes' great argument for God's existence derived from the idea of a perfect Being, nor by other metaphysical arguments that we have mentioned; yet Newton's own arguments for God's existence from the uniformity and suitability of different parts of the universe would not have seemed like proofs to Descartes.”

“Despite the disorder observed in Nature, one finds enough traces of the wisdom and power of its Author that one cannot fail to recognize Him.”

“One should not be deceived by philosophical works that pretend to be mathematical, but are merely dubious and murky metaphysics. Just because a philosopher can recite the words lemma, theorem and corollary doesn't mean that his work has the certainty of mathematics. That certainty does not derive from big words, or even from the method used by geometers, but rather from the utter simplicity of the objects considered by mathematics.”

“The supreme Being is everywhere; but He is not equally visible everywhere. Let us seek Him in the simplest things, in the most fundamental laws of Nature, in the universal rules by which movement is conserved, distributed or destroyed; and let us not seek Him in phenomena that are merely complex consequences of these laws.”

“Everything is so arranged that the blind logic of mathematics executes the will of the most enlightened and free Mind.”

“It is only mental habit that prevents us from realizing how miraculous it is that motion can be passed from one body to another. Once our eyes have opened, nothing is so striking. For those who have never thought about it, it doesn't seem mysterious; by contrast, those who have meditated on it may despair of ever understanding it.”

“Research into motion was not to the liking (or perhaps not within the scope) of the ancients, so that we may consider it as a completely new science. How could the ancients have discovered the laws of moiton, given that some philosophers reduced all their speculations about motion to sophistic disputes, whereas others denied that motion existed at all?”

“A true philosopher does not engage in vain disputes about the nature of motion; rather, he wishes to know the laws by which it is distributed, conserved or destroyed, knowing that such laws is the basis for all natural philosophy.”

“The elements that make up all other bodies, these must be bodies that are perfectly inelastic, undeformable and unchangeable.”

“When a change occurs in Nature, the quantity of action necessary for that change is as small as possible.”

“The quantity of action is the product of the mass of the bodies times their speed and the distance they travel. When a body is transported from one place to another, the action is proportional to the mass of the body, to its speed and to the distance over which it is transported.”