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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.

Galileo Galilei

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Galileo Galilei
Age: 77 †
Born: 1564
Born: February 15
Died: 1642
Died: January 8
Astrologer
Astronomer
Engineer
Inventor
Mathematician
Philosopher
Physicist
Polymath
Scientist
University Teacher
Galileo
G. Galilei
Understand
Philosophy
Cannot
Written
Ever
Eyes
Firsts
Lying
Book
Eye
Triangles
First
Universe
Grasp
Mean
Learn
Symbols
Great
Language
Lies

More quotes by Galileo Galilei

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They who depend upon manifest observations will philosophize better than those who persist in opinions repugnant to the senses.
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I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.
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See now the power of truth.
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[Copernicus] did not ignore the Bible, but he knew very well that if his doctrine were proved, then it could not contradict the Scriptures when they were rightly understood.
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To be humane, we must ever be ready to pronounce that wise, ingenious and modest statement 'I do not know'.
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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.
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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.
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I, Galileo, son of the late Vicenzo Galilei, swear that I never said that the prime numbers are useless. What I said was that you cannot count lunar craters by counting 2, 3, 5, 7.
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I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.
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Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?
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When the moon is ninety degrees away from the sun it sees but half the earth illuminated (the western half). For the other (the eastern half) is enveloped in night. Hence the moon itself is illuminated less brightly from the earth, and as a result its secondary light appears fainter to us.
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Nature's great book is written in mathematics.
Galileo Galilei
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The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.
Galileo Galilei
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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
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But, because my private lectures and domestic pupils are a great hinderance and intteruption of my studies, I wish to live entirely exempt from the former, and in great measure from the latter. ... in short, I should wish to gain my bread from my writings.
Galileo Galilei
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If experiments are performed thousands of times at all seasons and in every place without once producing the effects mentioned by your philosophers, poets, and historians, this will mean nothing and we must believe their words rather than our own eyes?
Galileo Galilei
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Holy Scripture could never lie or err...its decrees are of absolute and inviolable truth.
Galileo Galilei
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They know that it is human nature to take up causes whereby a man may oppress his neighbor, no matter how unjustly. ... Hence they have had no trouble in finding men who would preach the damnability and heresy of the new doctrine from the very pulpit.
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To excite in us tastes, odors, and sounds I believe that nothing is required in external bodies except shapes, numbers, and slow or rapid movements. ... if ears, tongues, and noses were removed, shapes and numbers and motions would remain, but not odors or tastes or sounds.
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The vain presumption of understanding everything can have no other basis than never having understood anything. For anyone who had ever experienced just once the perfect understanding of one single thing, and had truly tasted how knowledge is accomplished, would recognize that of the infinity of other truths he understands nothing.
Galileo Galilei