Top 100 Galilei Quotes
#1. It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#2. The first man to understand the extraordinary magical power of applying mathematical calculation to things in nature was an Italian called Galileo Galilei.
E.H. Gombrich
#3. I, Galileo, son of the late Vicenzo Galilei, swear that I never said that the prime numbers are useless. What I said was that you cannot count lunar craters by counting 2, 3, 5, 7 ...
Galileo Galilei
#4. in the ballroom of the Metropol Hotel on the twenty-first of June 1926, was the heretic, Galileo of Galilei, vindicated by a ping, a splat, a smash, a thunk, a thump, and a thud. Of
Amor Towles
#5. When a musician . . . does not have the ability to bend the souls of listeners to where he wishes, his skill and knowledge may be considered null and vain. - Vincenzo Galilei, 1581
Bruce Haynes
#6. It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
Galileo Galilei
#7. Being infinitely amazed, so do I give thanks to God, Who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things, unrevealed to bygone ages.
Galileo Galilei
#8. The mind God is looking for in man is a doubting, questioning mind, not a dogmatic mind; dogmatic reasoning is wrong reasoning. Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man's foot and stops him forever from advancing.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#9. I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition!
Galileo Galilei
#10. I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
Galileo Galilei
#11. It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.
Galileo Galilei
#12. I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.
Galileo Galilei
#13. Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?
Galileo Galilei
#14. We are surrounded by the dry thorns of the Inquisition on all four sides; throwing around words burning like fire is the shortest way to one's grave!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#15. The deeper I go in considering the vanities of popular reasoning, the lighter and more foolish I find them. What greater stupidity can be imagined than that of calling jewels, silver, and gold "precious," and earth and soil "base"?
Galileo Galilei
#16. A men whose every word is nothing but the truth is not a human being but a god! Gods do not die, whereas Aristotle is lying in a grave now.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#17. Nature ... does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.
Galileo Galilei
#18. For my part I consider the earth very noble and admirable precisely because of the diverse alterations, changes, generations, etc. that occur in it incessantly.
Galileo Galilei
#20. (T)he increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts.
Galileo Galilei
#21. Vision, I say, is related to light itself. But of this sensation and the things pertaining to it, I pretend to understand but little; and since even a long time would not suffice to explain that trifle, or even to hint at an explanation, I pass over this in silence.
Galileo Galilei
#22. Measure what can be measured, and make measurable what cannot be measured.
Galileo Galilei
#23. You cannot teach a person something he does not already know, you can only bring what he does know to his awareness.
Galileo Galilei
#24. Well, since paradoxes are at hand, let us see how it might be demonstrated that in a finite continuous extension it is not impossible for infinitely many voids to be found.
Galileo Galilei
#25. Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
Galileo Galilei
#26. To understand the Universe, you must understand the language in which it's written, the language of Mathematics.
Galileo Galilei
#28. All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Galileo Galilei
#29. When the moon is ninety degrees away from the sun it sees but half the earth illuminated (the western half). For the other (the eastern half) is enveloped in night. Hence the moon itself is illuminated less brightly from the earth, and as a result its secondary light appears fainter to us.
Galileo Galilei
#30. Showing a greater fondness for their own opinions than for truth, they sought to deny and disprove the new things which, if they had cared to look for themselves, their own senses would have demonstrated to them.
Galileo Galilei
#31. I do not think it is necessary to believe that the same God who has given us our senses, reason, and intelligence wished us to abandon their use, giving us by some other means the information that we could gain through them.
Galileo Galilei
#32. To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements ... if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds.
Galileo Galilei
#33. To go to the wine house and not to get drunk is as difficult as to dive into a pool and not get wet!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#34. I am inclined to think that the authority of Holy Scripture is intended to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation, which, being far above man's understanding, can not be made credible by any learning, or any other means than revelation by the Holy Spirit.
Galileo Galilei
#35. If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.
Galileo Galilei
#36. Oh my son, so poor in doing the right things, so rich in doing the wrong things! What great poverty it is to be so rich!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#37. You may force me to say what you wish; you may revile me for saying what I do. But it moves.
Galileo Galilei
#38. Nature ... is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, nor cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operations are understandable to men.
Galileo Galilei
#39. We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
Galileo Galilei
#40. The doctrine that the earth is neither the center of the universe nor immovable, but moves even with a daily rotation, is absurd, and both philosophically and theologically false, and at the least an error of faith.
Galileo Galilei
#41. [Copernicus] did not ignore the Bible, but he knew very well that if his doctrine were proved, then it could not contradict the Scriptures when they were rightly understood.
Galileo Galilei
#42. The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Galileo Galilei
#43. Nothing physical which sense-experience sets before our eyes, or which necessary demonstrations prove to us, ought to be called into question (much less condemned) upon the testimony of biblical passages.
Galileo Galilei
#44. That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
Galileo Galilei
#45. Spots are on the surface of the solar body where they are produced and also dissolved, some in shorter and others in longer periods. They are carried around the Sun; an important occurrence in itself.
Galileo Galilei
#46. I would say here something that was heard from an ecclesiastic of the most eminent degree: The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heavens go.
Galileo Galilei
#47. Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes - I mean the universe - but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written
Galileo Galilei
#48. It appears to me that those who rely simply on the weight of authority to prove any assertion, without searching out the arguments to support it, act absurdly. I wish to question freely and to answer freely without any sort of adulation. That well becomes any who are sincere in the search for truth.
Vincenzo Galilei
#50. Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.
Galileo Galilei
#51. I never worry about how many legs my chicken has, about whether it can fly or not, about which cock was her husband; that my hen gives me eggs is enough for me!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#52. I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
Galileo Galilei
#53. To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
Galileo Galilei
#54. Nothing can be taught to a man, only it's possibly to help him to discover it inside.
Galileo Galilei
#56. See now the power of truth; the same experiment which at first glance seemed to show one thing, when more carefully examined, assures us of the contrary.
Galileo Galilei
#57. To our natural and human reason, I say that these terms 'large,' 'small,' 'immense,' 'minute,' etc. are not absolute but relative; the same thing in comparison with various others may be called at one time 'immense' and at another 'imperceptible.
Galileo Galilei
#58. Among the great men who have philosophized about [the action of the tides], the one who surprised me most is Kepler. He was a person of independent genius, [but he] became interested in the action of the moon on the water, and in other occult phenomena, and similar childishness.
Galileo Galilei
#59. They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit ...
Galileo Galilei
#60. In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man.
Galileo Galilei
#61. I know it too well, my friend. Fresh water does not come out of a bitter spring; you don't expect to get rose perfume coming out of a rubbish heap, neither scorpions to kiss people!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#62. Man is a 'jar of mistakes', dear Giulia; as we have made a mistake, we are human; this proves it!
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#63. To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.
Galileo Galilei
#64. Some, merely to contradict what I had said, did not scruple to cast doubt upon things they had seen with their own eyes again and again.
Galileo Galilei
#65. In time you may discover everything that can be discovered, and still your progress will only be progress away from humanity. The distance between you and them can one day become so great that your joyous cry over some new gain could be answered by an universal shriek of horror.
Galileo Galilei
#66. I truly believe the book of philosophy to be that which stands perpetually open before our eyes, though since it is written in characters different from those of our alphabet it cannot be read by everyone.
Galileo Galilei
#68. It reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypotheses. To refute the latter I collected many proofs, but I do not publish them ... I would dare to publish my speculations if there were people men like you.
Galileo Galilei
#69. Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
Galileo Galilei
#70. The hypothesis is pretty; its only fault is that it is neither demonstrated nor demonstrable. Who does not see that this is purely arbitrary fiction that puts nothingness as existing and proposes nothing more than simple noncontradiciton?
Galileo Galilei
#72. You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
Galileo Galilei
#73. You can't teach anybody anything, only make them realize the answers are already inside them.
Galileo Galilei
#74. God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.
Galileo Galilei
#75. It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.
Galileo Galilei
#76. E pur si muove.
(Albeit It does move.)
[What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.]
Galileo Galilei
#77. What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Darwin was to the nineteenth.
Bertrand Russell
#78. When the number of children goes over one, God becomes miserly in granting intelligence; he takes it from the living child and gives it to the child to be born.
Mehmet Murat Ildan
#79. The Divine intellect indeed knows infinitely more propositions [than we can ever know]. But with regard to those few which the human intellect does understand, I believe that its knowledge equals the Divine in objective certainty.
Galileo Galilei
#80. I therefore concluded, and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury about the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous other observations. Referring to his pioneering telescope observations.
Galileo Galilei
#81. They seemed to forget that the increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment and growth of the arts; not their dimination or destruction.
Galileo Galilei
#82. Scripture is a book about going to Heaven. It's not a book about how the heavens go.
Galileo Galilei
#83. With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.
Galileo Galilei
#84. Mathematics is the language in which God has written the universe
Galileo Galilei
#85. The greatness and the glory of God shine forth marvelously in all His works, and is to be read above all in the open book of the heavens.
Galileo Galilei
#86. Holy Scripture could never lie or err ... its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth.
Galileo Galilei
#87. It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth
whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from wha.
Galileo Galilei
#88. The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics.
Galileo Galilei
#89. To me, a great ineptitude exists on the part of those who would have it that God made the universe more in proportion to the small capacity of their reason than to His immense, His infinite, power.
Galileo Galilei
#91. Their vain presumption of knowing all can take beginning solely from their never having known anything; for if one has but once experienced the perfect knowledge of one thing, and truly tasted what it is to know, he shall perceive that of infinite other conclusions he understands not so much as one.
Galileo Galilei
#92. They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.
Galileo Galilei
#93. We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Galileo Galilei
#94. In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
Galileo Galilei
#95. Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.
Galileo Galilei
#96. What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything? It's the mathematicians you have to trust, and they measure the skies like we measure a field.
Galileo Galilei
#97. Who indeed will set bounds to human ingenuity? Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being perceived is already discovered and known?
Galileo Galilei
#98. In the future, there will be opened a gateway and a road to a large and excellent science into which minds more piercing than mine shall penetrate to recesses still deeper.
Galileo Galilei
#99. The earth, in fair and grateful exchange, pays back to the moon an illumination similar to that which it receives from her throughout nearly all the darkest gloom of the night.
Galileo Galilei
#100. A fortune-teller means a braggart anyway. Don't you know that a donkey can't do but braying, a wolf can't do but howling, a horse can't do but neighing, and a fortune-teller can't do but telling lies?
Mehmet Murat Ildan
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