29 quotes
Wine is a mixture of moisture and light.
Lorenzo Magalotti's Scientific and Scholarly Letter (1721)
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.
Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957)
What has philosophy got to do with measuring anything? It's the mathematicians you have to trust, and they measure the skies like we measure a field.
You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
Nature doth, and in it alone is discovered an infinite wisdom, so that Divine Wisdom may be concluded to be infinitely infinite.
Dialogo sopra i Due Massi Sistemi del Mondo (1632)
I esteem myself happy to have as great an ally as you in my search for truth.
Letter to Johannes Kepler (1596)
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.
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
As to the query whether the finite parts of a limited continuum [continuo terminato] are finite infinite in number I will... answer that they are neither finite or infinite.
I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect had intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.
The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
Nature … is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
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.
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age.
Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (1615)
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 familiar stars.
Sidereus Nuncius (1609)
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.
I therefore concluded, and decided unhesitatingly, that there are three stars in the heavens moving about Jupiter, as Venus and Mercury about the Sun; which at length was established as clear as daylight by numerous other observations. These observations also established that there are not only three, but four, erratic sidereal bodies performing their revolutions round Jupiter.
Well, since paradoxes are at hand, let us see how it might be demonstrated that in a finite continuous extension it is not impossible for infinitely many voids to be found.
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
Proposition I. Theorem I: When a projectile is carried in motion compounded from equable horizontal and from naturally accelerated downward [motions], it describes a semiparabolic line in its movement.
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
To apply oneself to great inventions, starting from the smallest beginnings, is no task for ordinary minds; to divine that wonderful arts lie hid behind trivial and childish things is a conception for superhuman talents.
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
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?
Letter to Johannes Kepler (1610)