The Life of Galileo Quotes

On our old continent a rumor sprang up: there might be new ones. And since our ships began sailing to them the laughing continents have got the message: the great ocean they feared, is a little puddle. And a vast desire has sprung up to know the reasons for everything: why a stone falls when you let it go and why it rises when you toss it up.

God help us, I'm not half as sharp as those gentlemen in the philosophy department. I'm stupid. I understand absolutely nothing. So I'm compelled to fill the gaps in my knowledge. And when am I supposed to do that? When am I to get on with my research?

Today a world-famous scholar is offering you, and you alone, a highly marketable tube, for you to manufacture and sell as and how you wish.

I'm telling you astronomy has stagnated for the last thousand years because they had no telescope.

What you're seeing is the fact that there is no difference between heaven and earth. Today is 10 January 1610. Today mankind can write in its diary: Got rid of Heaven.

[T]he horny-handed old woman who gives her mule an extra bundle of hay on the eve of a journey, the sea captain who allows for storms and doldrums when laying in stores, the child who puts on his cap once they have convinced

him that it may rain: these are the people I pin my hopes to, because they all accept proof. Yes, I believe in reason's gentle tyranny over people. Sooner or later they have to give in to it.

Copernicus, don't forget, wanted them to believe his figures; but I only want them to believe their eyes.

You're an idiot, and to hell with manners, just give it over or you'll start something.

Right, then let's have new textbooks.

Just like them. It's their whole system of government. Chopping us off like the diseased branch of some barren figtree.

As if a book could make any difference.

I am told that this Mr. Galilei moves mankind away from the centre of the universe and dumps it somewhere on the edge. Clearly this makes him an enemy of the human race. We must treat him as such. Mankind is the crown of creation…God’s highest and dearest creature. How could He take something so miraculous…and lodge it on a remote, constantly elusive star?...How can there be people so perverse as to pin their faith to these slaves of the multiplication table?

Mr. Galilei, before he left Father Clavius said: Now it's up to the theologians to see how they can straighten out the movements of the heavens

once more. You've won.

Welcome to Rome, Galileo my friend. You know its origins? Two little boys, so runs the legend, were given milk and shelter by a she-wolf. Since that time all her children have had to pay for their milk.

He's a terrible man. He cheerfully sets out to convict God of the most elementary errors in astronomy. I suppose God hadn't got far enough in his studies before he wrote the bible; is that it?

Our poverty has no meaning: hunger is no trial of strength, it’s merely not having eaten: effort is no virtue, it's just bending and carrying. Can you see now why I read into the Holy Congregations decree a noble motherly compassion; a vast goodness of soul?

An apple from the tree of knowledge! He's wolfing it down. He is damned forever, but he has got to wolf it down, the poor glutton.

For three months I'll have to be careful, because the sun will be in Aries, but then I shall get a particularly favourable ascendant and the clouds will part. So long as I keep my eye on Jupiter I can travel as much as I like, because I'm an Aries.

No! No! No! I am not going to have the multiplication table broken. No!

Wine-pump! Snail-eater! Did you save your precious skin?

You were hiding the truth. From the enemy. Even in matters of ethics you were centuries ahead of us.

The poverty of the many is as old as the hills, and from pulpit and lecture platform we hear that it is as hard as the hills to get rid of. Our new art of doubting delighted the mass audience. They tore the telescope out of our hands and trained it on their tormentors, the princes, landlords and priests. These selfish and domineering men, having greedily exploited the fruits of science, found that the cold eye of science had been turned on a primaeval but contrived poverty that could clearly be swept away if they were swept away themselves.