Galileo Galilei

“מעולם לא פגשתי אדם שאי אפשר ללמוד משהו ממנו.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“If the Earth were not subject to any change I would consider the Earth a big but useless body in universe, paralyzed...superfluous and unnatural.Those who so exalt incorruptibility, unchangeability and the like, are, I think, reduced to saying such things both because of inordinate desire they have to live for a long time and because of the terror they have of death...they do not realize that if men were immortal, they would have never come into the world.”

“It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the Moon.”

“If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.”

“Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.”

“The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.”

“Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.”

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

“He who looks the higher is the more highly distinguished, and turning over the great book of nature (which is the proper object of philosophy) is the way to elevate one's gaze.”

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

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is 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. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”

“Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.”

“Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.”

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

“We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.”

“And yet it moves.”

“It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.”