Quotes by Galileo Galilei

About Galileo Galilei:

Galileo Galilei was an Italian astronomer, physicist, engineer, philosopher, and mathematician who played a major role in the scientific revolution during the Renaissance. His achievements include improvements to the telescope and consequent astronomical observations and support for heliocentrism. Galileo has been called the "father of modern observational astronomy", the "father of modern physics", and the "father of modern science".
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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.

Galileo Galilei

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 fa...

Galileo Galilei

For in the sciences the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man. Besides, the modern observations deprive all former writers of any authority, since if they had seen what we see, they w...

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

Galileo Galilei

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 (da...

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

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.

Galileo Galilei

My dear , 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?

Galileo Galilei

I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as in my search for truth. I will read work ... all the more willingly because I have for many years been a partisan of the view because it reveals to me the causes of many natural phenomena that are ent...

Galileo Galilei

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.

Galileo Galilei

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

Galileo Galilei

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.

Galileo Galilei

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

Galileo Galilei

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

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

Galileo Galilei

Author Bio

  • NameGalileo Galilei
  • Descriptionastronomer (1564–1642)
  • AliasesGalileo
  • BornFebruary 25, 1564
  • DiedJanuary 8, 1642
  • CountryItaly
  • ProfessionAstronomer; Philosopher; Mathematician; Physicist; Inventor; Astrologer; Polymath; Non-fiction Writer; University Professor