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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

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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
Would
Perfect
Bases
Presumption
Science
Recognize
Infinity
Anything
Understood
Understands
Ever
Truly
Truths
Everything
Single
Experienced
Nothing
Anyone
Accomplished
Thing
Understanding
Basis
Never
Knowledge
Vain
Tasted

More quotes by Galileo Galilei

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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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Knowing thyself, that is the greatest wisdom.
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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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One can understand nature only when one has learned the language and the signs in which it speaks to us but this language is mathematics and these signs are methematical figures.
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I believe that the intention of Holy Writ was to persuade men of the truths necessary to salvation such as neither science nor other means could render credible, but only the voice of the Holy Spirit.
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Well, since paradoxes are at hand, let us see how it might be demonstrated that in a finite continuous extension it is not impossible for infinitely many voids to be found.
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My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?
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I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him.
Galileo Galilei
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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!
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It is very pious to say and prudent to affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth -- whenever its true meaning is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from wha.
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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.
Galileo Galilei
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I do not know what to say in a case so surprising, so unlooked for and so novel.
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.
Galileo Galilei
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It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.
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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To understand the Universe, you must understand the language in which it's written, the language of Mathematics.
Galileo Galilei
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With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them.
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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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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The number of people that can reason well is much smaller than those that can reason badly. If reasoning were like hauling rocks, then several reasoners might be better than one. But reasoning isn't like hauling rocks, it's like, it's like racing, where a single, galloping Barbary steed easily outruns a hundred wagon-pulling horses.
Galileo Galilei