Author
Italian · 1564-1642 · 10 quotes
Italian · 1564–1642
10 quotes in our collection
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist, mathematician, and philosopher whose work transformed the scientific understanding of nature. His major works include Sidereus Nuncius, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, and Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences. Galileo used telescopic observation to report mountains on the Moon, moons of Jupiter, phases of Venus, and other evidence that challenged inherited cosmology. He matters because he joined experiment, mathematics, observation, and argument in ways that helped define modern science. His conflict with the Roman Inquisition over heliocentrism made him a lasting symbol of inquiry under authority, though the historical details are complex. Galileo's quotes endure because they speak to evidence, courage, intellectual freedom, and the stubborn independence of observed reality. His life remains central to how modern readers imagine science under pressure.
Common Themes
Collected Quotes
Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes, I mean the universe, but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written.
When we have the decrees of Nature, authority goes for nothing; reason is absolute.
I count myself happy, in the search after truth, to have so great an ally as yourself, and one who is so great a friend of the truth itself.
I have collected many arguments for the purpose of refuting the latter; but I do not venture to bring them to the light of publicity, for fear of sharing the fate of our master, Copernicus, who, although he has earned immortal fame with some, yet with very many has become an object of ridicule and scorn.
This sort of men fancied that philosophy was to be studied like the Aeneid or Odyssey, and that the true reading of nature was to be detected by the collation of texts.
I shall only add a promise to peruse your book dispassionately, and with a conviction that I shall find in it much to admire.