Galileo Galilei

(1564-1642)

• "My dear Kepler, 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?"

• "I never met a man so stupid I could not learn something from him."

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

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

• "You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it for himself."

• "What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything?"

• "[I]f 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."

• "The Bible tells us how to go to the heavens, not how the heavens go."

• Wine is "light held together by moisture."

• "All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."