Galileo Galilei Quotes - Page 2

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

Scripture is a book about going to Heaven. It's not a book about how the heavens go.

You may force me to say what you wish; you may revile me for saying what I do. But it moves.

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.

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

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

With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

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.

Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

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.

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

See now the power of truth.

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.

They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.

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.

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.

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

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

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

If experiments are performed thousands of times at all seasons and in every place without once producing the effects mentioned by your philosophers, poets, and historians, this will mean nothing and we must believe their words rather than our own eyes?

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.

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.

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