187 Quotes by Galileo Galilei

Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.

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.

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.

Who would set a limit to the mind? Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

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

E pur si muove. (Albeit It does move.)[What Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.]

[...] non è effetto alcuna in natura, per minimo che e' sia, all'intera cognizion del quale possano arrivare i piú specolativi ingegni. Questa cosí vana prosunzione d'intendere il tutto non può aver principio da altro che dal non avere inteso mai nulla, perché, quando altri avesse esperimentato una volta sola a intender perfettamente una sola cosa ed avesse gustato veramente come è fatto il sapere, conoscerebbe come dell'infinità dell'altre conclusioni niuna ne intende.

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

If the Earth were not subject to any change I would consider the Earth a big but useless body in universe, paralyzed...superfluous and unnatural.Those who so exalt incorruptibility, unchangeability and the like, are, I think, reduced to saying such things both because of inordinate desire they have to live for a long time and because of the terror they have of death...they do not realize that if men were immortal, they would have never come into the world.