Galileo Galilei Quotes
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If there were as great a scarcity of soil as of jewels or precious metals, there would not be a prince who would not spend a bushel of diamonds and rubies and a cartload of gold just to have enough earth to plant a jasmine in a little pot, or to sow an orange seed and watch it sprout, grow, and produce its handsome leaves, its fragrant flowers, and fine fruit.
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But let us remember that we are dealing with infinities and indivisibles both of which transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness.
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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! But they behave to me in order that I may become the ignoramus and the fool of Italy...
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The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.
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The prohibition of science would be contrary to the Bible, which in hundreds of places teaches us how 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.
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There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly.
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Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?
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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.
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They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.
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Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.
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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.
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Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.
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But some, besides allegiance to their original error, possess I know not what fanciful interest in remaining hostile not so much toward the things in question as toward their discoverer.
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I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forego their use.
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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.
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Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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[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.
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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.
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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.