Skip to content

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 Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957)

Another quote →

Variants

Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, because things came first, and their names subsequently.

Topics

Philosophy

More quotes by Galileo Galilei

Wine is a mixture of moisture and light.

Lorenzo Magalotti's Scientific and Scholarly Letter (1721)

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)

All Galileo Galilei quotes →

You may also like

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Galileo Galilei (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.