Newton's platonism

The following often cited quote by Isaac Newton shows his thoroughly platonist attitude. Since he was primarily a theoretician it is safe to assume that the statement is as much about his mathematical discoveries as they might be about physical facts:

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 seashore, 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.

It is interesting to note that another mathematical genius, Grothendieck, has also compared the mathematical body of truth, unknown to the mind, as an ocean.