Wise Reminders From Galileo

Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (February 15th, 1564 – January 8th 1642), known as Galileo, was an Italian astronomer, engineer, and physicist. Galileo has been called the father of observational astronomy, modern science modern physics, and the scientific.

Galileo's championing of the Earth rotating daily and revolving around the sun was opposed by the Catholic Church and some astronomers. He was investigated by the Roman Inquisition in 1615 and found "vehemently suspect of heresy” and forced to recant. He spent the rest of his life under house arrest.

Below we list some words of wisdom by Galileo.

"You can't teach anybody anything, only make them realize the answers are already inside them."

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them."

"To be humane, we must ever be ready to pronounce that wise, ingenious and modest statement 'I do not know'."

"I have never met a man so ignorant that I couldn't learn something from him."

"In the sciences, the authority of thousands of opinions is not worth as much as one tiny spark of reason in an individual man."

"Knowing thyself, that is the greatest wisdom."

"The laws of nature are written by the hand of God in the language of mathematics."

"Two truths cannot contradict one another."

"The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do."
"There are those who reason well, but they are greatly outnumbered by those who reason badly."

"The greatest wisdom is to get to know oneself."

"And who can doubt that it will lead to the worst disorders when minds created free by God are compelled to submit slavishly to an outside will? When we are told to deny our senses and subject them to the whim of others? When people devoid of whatsoever competence are made judges over experts and are granted authority to treat them as they please? These are the novelties which are apt to bring about the ruin of commonwealths and the subversion of the state."

"Wine is sunlight, held together by water."

"You cannot teach a person something he does not already know, you can only bring what he does know to his awareness."

"If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon."

"Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs."

"Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?"

"In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual."

"It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved."

"I truly believe the book of philosophy to be that which stands perpetually open before our eyes, though since it is written in characters different from those of our alphabet it cannot be read by everyone."

"With regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them."

"Some, merely to contradict what I had said, did not scruple to cast doubt upon things they had seen with their own eyes again and again."

"See now the power of truth."

"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."

“E pur si muove.” ("Albeit It does move". That's what Galileo purportedly muttered after torturers forced him to recant his theory that the earth orbits the sun.)

Stephen Petullo, Scott Petullo