17 Galileo Galilei Quotes on Science

Galileo Galilei quotes on science

2. 'I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.

3. I have for many years been a partisan of the Copernican view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are entirely incomprehensible in the light of the generally accepted hypothesis. To refute the latter I have collected many proofs, but I do not publish them, because I am deterred by the fate of our teacher Copernicus who, although he had won immortal fame with a few, was ridiculed and condemned by countless people (for very great is the number of the stupid). (Quoted in Hermann Kesten, Copernicus and His World, trans. by E.b. Aston and Norbert Gutterman, NY, Roy Publishers, 1945, p.349, emphasis added)

5. 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 ignoramous and the fool of Italy... ( Selection, p.244)

12. ...if I shall have sufficient strength to improve and amplify what was written and published by me up to now about motion by adding some little speculations, and in particular those relating to the force of percussion, in the investigation of which I have consumed hundreds and thousands of hours, and finally reduced this to very easy explanation, so that people can understand it in less than half an hour of time.

14. Alas! Your dear friend and servant Galileo has been for the last month hopelessly blind; so that this heaven, this earth, this universe, which I by my marvelous discoveries and clear demonstrations had enlarged a hundred thousand times beyond the belief of the wise men of bygone ages, henceforward for me is shrunk into such a small space as is filled by my own bodily sensations. Jan. 2, 1638, The private life of Galileo, pp.278-279.

16. 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.

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

19. Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

20. Eppur si muove

23. In questions of science the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

24. 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?

26. Philosophy is written in this grand book- I mean the universe- which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth (1623)

27. The great book of nature is written in mathematical symbols.

28. The Bible tells us how to go to the heavens, not how the heavens go.

29. What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything?

32. 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. Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems

33. Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.