187 Quotes by Galileo Galilei

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.

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

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.

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.

Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.

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

The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this... is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.