29 quotes
I am certainly interested in a tribunal in which, for having used my reason, I was deemed little less than a heretic. Who knows but men will reduce me from the profession of a philosopher to that of historian of the Inquisition! But they behave to me in order that I may become the ignoramus and the fool of Italy...
Letter to Fr. Vincenzo Renieri (1633)
Among all the great men who have philosophized about this remarkable effect, I am more astonished at Kepler than at any other. Despite his open and acute mind, and though he has at his fingertips the motions attributed to the earth, he nevertheless lent his ear and his assent to the moon's dominion over the waters, to occult properties, and to such puerilities.
Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632)
I have succeeded in proving; and what I consider more important, there have been opened up to this vast and most excellent science, of which my work is merely the beginning, ways and means by which other minds more acute than mine will explore its remote corners.
Dialogues and Mathematical Demonstrations Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)
All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
Attributed Angels in the workplace: stories and inspirations for creating a new world of work (1999)
It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle.
Misattributed Giorgio de Santillana attributed this remark to the Dialogue in The Crime of Galileo (1955)
Mathematics is the language in which God wrote the universe.
Attributed Statistics: Concepts and Applications (1994)
Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
Misattributed
I have never met a man so ignorant that I could not learn something from him.
Attributed
Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.
Misattributed Building Fluency Through Practice and Performance (2008)