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Inspirational Quotations

by RightAttitudes.com

Inspirational Quotes by Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

Inspirational Quotations by Galileo Galilei (Italian Astronomer)

Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) was a renowned Florentine mathematician and astronomer who made significant contributions to astronomy, physics, and scientific philosophy. His work on falling bodies also laid the groundwork for Newton’s subsequent theories.

Born in Pisa, Italy, Galileo developed the concept of the pendulum clock while still a student at the University of Pisa. Around the same time, he challenged long-established wisdom by discovering that all objects, regardless of their density, fall at the same rate through a vacuum. When many doubted this discovery, he famously proved it by dropping objects of different densities from the same height. By the time he graduated from the university, Galileo had already made his mark on the European scientific community.

Galileo invented the pump, the hydrostatic balance, and the refracting telescope. His refracting telescope was over 20 times more potent than the strongest until then. With his new invention, he studied the earth’s moon, verified the existence of the four moons of Jupiter, observed a supernova, and discovered sunspots.

Galileo is most famous for providing evidence for Copernicus’s heliocentrism theory that the earth revolves around the sun, which had been declared heresy by the Inquisition. Galileo continued to write about it, despite objections from the Catholic Church, which banned and burned his books. When forced to publicly renounce his beliefs in 1633, as he signed his prepared declaration that the earth was stationary, he muttered “Eppur si muove” (“And yet … it moves.”)

Galileo spent the last nine years of his life under house arrest in Florence. He continued to study physics and astronomy until he grew completely blind. It wasn’t until 1992 that the Catholic Church officially admitted that Galileo’s views on the solar system are correct.

In addition to physics and astronomy, Galileo made many significant contributions to the progress of human thought, particularly the methodology of science. He detailed in his twin treatises—the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) and the Dialogues Concerning Two New Sciences (1638)—that science must be based on observation to be the real source of knowledge of the physical world, as opposed to traditional authority and philosophical speculation. In his method, the use of experiments not only demonstrated insights that were the result of prior scientific theorizing but also provided the basis for theories where there were pre-experimental insights.

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Galileo Galilei

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.
—Galileo Galilei

But of all other stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind must have been his who conceived how to communicate his most secret thoughts to any other person, though very far distant either in time or place? And with no greater difficulty than the various arrangement of two dozen little signs upon paper? Let this be the seal of all the admirable inventions of man.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Words

You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.
—Galileo Galilei

The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Heaven

I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn’t learn something from him.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Attitude, Ignorance

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: The Truth, Understanding, Discovery

Infinities and indivisibles transcend our finite understanding, the former on account of their magnitude, the latter because of their smallness; Imagine what they are when combined.
—Galileo Galilei

The laws of Nature are written in the language of mathematics…the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Mathematics

Doubt is the father of invention.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Doubt

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Authority, Science

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Light, Wine, One liners, Drinking, Alcohol

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent upon it, can still slowly ripen a fruit tree, as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Nature, Gardening

Philosophy is written in this grand book – I mean the Universe – which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and interpret the characters in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Philosophy

I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Stars

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
—Galileo Galilei

The difficulties in the study of the infinite arise because we attempt, with our finite minds, to discuss the infinite, assigning to it those properties which we give to the finite and limited; but this…is wrong, for we cannot speak of infinite quantities as being the one greater or less than or equal to another.
—Galileo Galilei

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: People, Love, Teach

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.
—Galileo Galilei
Topics: Explanation

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