Quotes from Galileo Galilei

Nature's great book is written in mathematics.

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.

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

And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

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.

I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.

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.

E pur si muove. (And yet it moves.) ( What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun .)

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so

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.

I have been in my bed for five weeks, oppressed with weakness and other infirmities from which my age, seventy four years, permits me not to hope release. Added to this (proh dolor! [O misery!]) the sight of my right eye — that eye whose labors (dare I say it) have had such glorious results — is for ever lost. That of the left, which was and is imperfect, is rendered null by continual weeping.

And, believe me, if I were again beginning my studies, I should follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

T)he increase of known truths stimulates the investigation, establishment, and growth of the arts.

Who indeed will set bounds to human ingenuity? Who will assert that everything in the universe capable of being perceived is already discovered and known?

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

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

To our natural and human reason, I say that these terms 'large,' 'small,' 'immense,' 'minute,' etc. are not absolute but relative; the same thing in comparison with various others may be called at one time 'immense' and at another 'imperceptible.

In the future, there will be opened a gateway and a road to a large and excellent science into which minds more piercing than mine shall penetrate to recesses still deeper.

To me, a great ineptitude exists on the part of those who would have it that God made the universe more in proportion to the small capacity of their reason than to His immense, His infinite, power.

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.

The sun with all the planets around it, and depending on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as though it had nothing else in the Universe to do.

Toda verdad es fácil de comprender una vez que ha sido descubierta, el problema es descubrirla

Man kann einen Menschen nichts lehren. Man kann ihm nur helfen, es in sich selbst zu finden!

Die Neugier steht immer an erster Stelle eines Problems, das gelöst werden will.