Galileo Galilei famous quotes

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Inspirational #Attitude #Learning

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Education

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Learning #Science #Discovery

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

#People #Matter #Arguing

It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Beautiful #Moon #Sight

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Inspirational #Truth #Science

Surely, God could have caused birds to fly with their bones made of solid gold, with their veins full of quicksilver, with their flesh heavier than lead, and with their wings exceedingly small. He did not, and that ought to show something. It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Ignorance #Order #Wings

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Education #Plato #Math

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Math #Statistics #Mathematics

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

#Inspirational #Funny #Summer

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Truth #Inspiration #Humble

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him find it within himself.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Inspirational #Inspiring #Education

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

#Answers #Vex #Scripture

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Men #Hands #Long

Infinities and indivisibles transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness; Imagine what they are when combined.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Understanding #Infinity #Imagine

Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is 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. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Philosophy #Book #Mean

I've loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Nature #Stars #Night

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

#Religion #Astronomy #Professors

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

#Philosophy #Lying #Book

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

#Atheist #Believe #Mean

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Believe #Humor #Religion

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Drinking #Wine #Water

There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Reason #Wells

The surface of the Moon is not smooth, uniform, and precisely spherical as a great number of philosophers believe it to be, but is uneven, rough, and full of cavities and prominences, being not unlike the face of the Earth, relieved by chains of mountains and deep valleys.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Believe #Moon #Numbers

In my studies of astronomy and philosophy I hold this opinion about the universe, that the Sun remains fixed in the centre of the circle of heavenly bodies, without changing its place; and the Earth, turning upon itself, moves round the Sun.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Philosophy #Moving #Circles

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Perception #Steps #Failing

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Religion #Principles

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

#Simple #Reality #Naked

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Stars #Together #Way

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Nature #Dark #Moon

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

#Light #Long #Silence

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

#Men #Sparks #Tiny

Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Accounts

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Heaven #Way

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Book #Math #Language

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Believe #Soul #Orthodox

Nature...does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Mean #Doe

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

#Men #Religion #Doctrine

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

#Science #Important #Body

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

#Doe #Relief #Sculpture

Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Impossible

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

#Moving #Errors #Religion

Nature's great book is written in mathematics.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Book #Science #World

The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Perfect #Understanding

I believe that the intention of Holy Writ was to persuade men of the truths necessary to salvation; such as neither science nor other means could render credible, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Believe #Mean #Men

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

#Independent #Science #Moon

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

#Simple #Thinking #Faults

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

#Stars #Eye #Numbers

...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

#Eye #Biblical #Thinking

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

#Philosophy #Sky #Fields

[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

#Doctrine #Copernicus #Scripture

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

#Hands #Might #Void

God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Doctrine

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

#Knowledge #Knowing #Perfect

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

#Philosophy #Believe #Book

Two truths cannot contradict one another.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Truth #Two

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

#Stars #Moving #Science

I cannot but be astonished that Sarsi should persist in trying to prove by means of witnesses something that I may see for myself at any time by means of experiment. Witnesses are examined in doutbful matters which are past and transient, not in those which are actual and present. A judge must seek by means of witnesses to determine whether Peter injured John last night, but not whether John was injured, since the judge can see that for himself.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Mean #Past #Night

E pur si muove. "Albeit It does move". (That's what Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.)
-- Galileo Galilei

#Moving #Orbit #Doe

I have been judged vehemently suspect of heresy, that is, of having held and believed that the sun in the centre of the universe and immoveable, and that the earth is not at the center of same, and that it does move. Wishing however, to remove from the minds of your Eminences and all faithful Christians this vehement suspicion reasonably conceived against me, I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error, heresy, and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church. (Quoted in Shea and Artigas 194)
-- Galileo Galilei

#Christian #Moving #Heart

I would beg the wise and learned fathers (of the church) to consider with all diligence the difference which exists between matters of mere opinion and matters of demonstration. ... [I]t is not in the power of professors of the demonstrative sciences to alter their opinions at will, so as to be now of one way of thinking and now of another. ... [D]emonstrated conclusions about things in nature of the heavens, do not admit of being altered with the same ease as opinions to what is permissible or not, under a contract, mortgage, or bill of exchange.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Wise #Nature #Father

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Knowledge #Science #Keys

But, because my private lectures and domestic pupils are a great hinderance and intteruption of my studies, I wish to live entirely exempt from the former, and in great measure from the latter. ... in short, I should wish to gain my bread from my writings.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Writing #Wish #Research

I abjure with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, I curse and detest the said errors and heresies, and generally all and every error and sect contrary to the Holy Catholic Church.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Heart #Errors #Catholic

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

#Bible #Believe #Different

Take note, theologians, that in your desire to make matters of faith out of propositions relating to the fixity of sun and earth you run the risk of eventually having to condemn as heretics those who would declare the earth to stand still and the sun to change position-eventually, I say, at such a time as it might be physically or logically proved that the earth moves and the sun stands still.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Running #Moving #Science

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

#Science #Men #Light

And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state.
-- Galileo Galilei

#People #Judging #Doubt

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Men #Action #Reason

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

#Distance #Humanity #One Day

What ever the course of our lives, we should recieve them as the highest gift from the hand of God, in which equally reposed the power to do nothing whatever for us. Indeed, we should accept misfortune not only in thanks, but in infinite gratitude to Providence, which by such means detaches us from an excessive love for Earthly things and elevates our minds to the celestial and divine.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Gratitude #Mean #Hands

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

#Art #Growth #Forget

Holy Writ was intended to teach men how to go to Heaven not how the heavens go.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Men #Heaven #Holy

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Education #Squares #Numbers

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Thinking #Scripture

We see only the simple motion of descent, since that other circular one common to the Earth, the tower, and ourselves remains imperceptible. There remains perceptible to us only that of the stone, which is not shared by us; and, because of this, sense shows it as by a straight line, always parallel to the tower, which is built upright and perpendicular upon the terrestrial surface.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Simple #Earth

But of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Men #Two #Secret

The Grand Duke [of Tuscany] ...after observing the Medicaean plants several times with me ... has now invited me to attach myself to him with the annual salary of one thousand florins, and with the title of Philosopher and Principal Mathematicial to His Highness; without the duties of office to perform, but with the most complete leisure; so that I can complete my Treatises...
-- Galileo Galilei

#Office #Tuscany #Leisure

But what exceeds all wonders, I have discovered four new planets and observed their proper and particular motions, different among themselves and from the motions of all the other stars; and these new planets move about another very large star [Jupiter] like Venus and Mercury, and perchance the other known planets, move about the Sun. As soon as this tract, which I shall send to all the philosophers and mathematicians as an announcement, is finished, I shall send a copy to the Most Serene Grand Duke, together with an excellent spyglass, so that he can verify all these truths.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Stars #Moving #Together

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

#Firsts #Glances #Shows

Nature is written in mathematical language.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Language #Mathematics #Mathematical

Being beautiful is not in the way you dress nor on the pigments you put in your face. Being beautiful is being simple.All girls are insecure, they may not show it, but they are, every girl believes that they have a 'defect' but honestly, you don't! every girl is beautiful, no matter what she wears, what she looks like, or how her body is. don't worry about that senseless stuff, beauty comes in all shapes and sizes.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

#Beauty #Beautiful #Girl

The Universe is a grand book which cannot be read until one first learns to comprehend the language and become familiar with the characters in which it is composed. It is written in the language of mathematics.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Book #Character #Statistics

The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this... is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Giving #Mind #Study

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

#Science #Heaven #Degrees

Philosophy itself cannot but benefit from our disputes, for if our conceptions prove true, new achievements will be made; if false, their refutation will further confirm the original doctrines.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Philosophy #Achievement #Doctrine

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

#Essence #Names #Firsts

The number of fixed stars which observers have been able to see without artificial powers of sight up to this day can be counted. It is therefore decidedly a great feat to add to their number, and to set distinctly before the eyes other stars in myriads, which have never been seen before, and which surpass the old, previously known stars in number more than ten times.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Stars #Eye #Sight

My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?
-- Galileo Galilei

#Laughing #Kepler #Telescopes

It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Nature #Mind #Want

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

#Science #Night #Moon

I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].
-- Galileo Galilei

#Science #Moon #Thinking

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

#Looks #Opinion #Cold

Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together. Here, at Padua, is the principal professor of philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, [telescope] which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? what shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! and to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa laboring before the grand duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the sky.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Laughter #Philosophy #Moon

It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Errors #Would Be #Way

The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics...the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Math #Law #Circles

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

#Nature #Men #Law

Measure what can be measured, and make measureable what cannot be measured.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Physics

Holy Scripture could never lie or err...its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Bible #Lying #Scripture

You can't teach anybody anything, only make them realize the answers are already inside them.
-- Galileo Galilei

#Inspirational Life #Answers #Realizing