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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.
Galileo Galilei -
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.
Galileo Galilei
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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 -
The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.
Galileo Galilei -
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 -
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 -
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.
Galileo Galilei -
Scripture is a book about going to Heaven. It's not a book about how the heavens go.
Galileo Galilei
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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 -
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 -
You can't teach anybody anything, only make them realize the answers are already inside them.
Galileo Galilei -
See now the power of truth.
Galileo Galilei -
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 -
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
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It was granted to me alone to discover all the new phenomena in the sky and nothing to anybody else. This is the truth which neither envy nor malice can supress.
Galileo Galilei -
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 -
One can understand nature only when one has learned the language and the signs in which it speaks to us; but this language is mathematics and these signs are methematical figures.
Galileo Galilei -
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 -
To understand the Universe, you must understand the language in which it's written, the language of Mathematics.
Galileo Galilei -
Knowing thyself, that is the greatest wisdom.
Galileo Galilei
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It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned.
Galileo Galilei -
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 -
God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.
Galileo Galilei -
I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.
Galileo Galilei