Galileo Inspirational Quotes

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

Such a lot is won when even a single man gets to his feet and says No

We're better than Galileo. Because he's dead.

I want to be William Shakespeare and Galileo and Robert Frost. I want to be Sappho. I want to be Jane Austen. I want to be Holden Caulfield and Marilyn Monroe and Joan of Arc. I’m sad to think they came before me in history, they made their mark without me. But they were there. They happened.

If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.

Wise men speak because they have something to say; fools because they have to say something.” ― Plato

All truths are easy to understand once you find them, the point is to discover them

His laws changed all of physics and astronomy. His laws made it possible to calculate the mass of the sun and planets. The way it's done is immensely beautiful. If you know the orbital period of any planet, say, Jupiter or the Earth and you know its distance to the Sun; you can calculate the mass of the Sun. Doesn't this sound like magic? We can carry this one step further - if you know the orbital period of one of Jupiter's bright moons, discovered by Galileo in 1609, and you know the distance between Jupiter and that moon, you can calculate the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, if you know the orbital period of the moon around the Earth (it's 27.32 days), and you know the mean distance between the Earth and the moon (it's about 200,039 miles), then you can calculate to a high degree of accuracy the mass of the Earth. … But Newton's laws reach far beyond our solar system. They dictate and explain the motion of stars, binary stars, star clusters, galaxies and even clusters of galaxies. And Newton's laws deserve credit for the 20th century discovery of what we call dark matter. His laws are beautiful. Breathtakingly simple and incredibly powerful at the same time. They explain so much and the range of phenomena they clarify is mind boggling. By bringing together the physics of motion, of interaction between objects and of planetary movements, Newton brought a new kind of order to astronomical measurements, showing how, what had been a jumble of confused observations made through the centuries were all interconnected.

if you had retroactively applied the rules of scientific rationalism to all of the major scientific discoveries of the past 500 years you would have invalidated most of them. Perhaps most (penicillin, the X-Ray, the microwave, Aspirin, radio, Archimedes in the bath)  were the product of “inspired opportunism”. As he once put it: “a methodology was an ideology Galileo could not afford.

Is it possible that the Pentateuch could not have been written by uninspired men? that the assistance of God was necessary to produce these books? Is it possible that Galilei ascertained the mechanical principles of 'Virtual Velocity,' the laws of falling bodies and of all motion; that Copernicus ascertained the true position of the earth and accounted for all celestial phenomena; that Kepler discovered his three laws—discoveries of such importance that the 8th of May, 1618, may be called the birth-day of modern science; that Newton gave to the world the Method of Fluxions, the Theory of Universal Gravitation, and the Decomposition of Light; that Euclid, Cavalieri, Descartes, and Leibniz, almost completed the science of mathematics; that all the discoveries in optics, hydrostatics, pneumatics and chemistry, the experiments, discoveries, and inventions of Galvani, Volta, Franklin and Morse, of Trevithick, Watt and Fulton and of all the pioneers of progress—that all this was accomplished by uninspired men, while the writer of the Pentateuch was directed and inspired by an infinite God? Is it possible that the codes of China, India, Egypt, Greece and Rome were made by man, and that the laws recorded in the Pentateuch were alone given by God? Is it possible that Æschylus and Shakespeare, Burns, and Beranger, Goethe and Schiller, and all the poets of the world, and all their wondrous tragedies and songs are but the work of men, while no intelligence except the infinite God could be the author of the Pentateuch? Is it possible that of all the books that crowd the libraries of the world, the books of science, fiction, history and song, that all save only one, have been produced by man? Is it possible that of all these, the bible only is the work of God?

Stars are nothing but the sources of light,so stay lightened by them.

The heaviest penalty for declining to rule is to be ruled by someone inferior to yourself.” ― Plato     “According

We are what we repeatedly do. Greatness then, is not an act, but a habit”  ― Aristotle     “...happiness

All I insist on, and nothing else, is that you should show the whole world that you are not afraid. Be silent, if you choose; but when it is necessary, speak—and speak in such a way that people will remember It.”  ― Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart     “As

Anybody can become angry — that is easy, but to be angry with the right person and to the right degree and at the right time and for the right purpose, and in the right way — that is not within everybody's power and is not easy.”  ― Aristotle     “Excellence

And as the bombshells of my daily fears explode I try to trace them to my youth And then you had to bring up reincarnation Over a couple of beers the other night And now I'm serving time for mistakes Made by another in another lifetime How long till my soul gets it right Can any human being ever reach that kind of light I call on the resting soul of galileo King of night vision, king of insight ... But then again it feels like some sort of inspiration To let the next life off the hook But she'll say "look what I had to overcome from my last life I think I'll write a book

Wittgenstein could not avoid recognizing that “an experience is such that when I prove it to myself I marvel at the existence of the world. And here I am inclined to use phrases such as ‘how extraordinary it is that something exists’ or ‘how extraordinary it is that the world exists.’” This wonder at existence is the condition for an authentic encounter with things and opens up the possibility of knowledge.

Galileo got into trouble because he maintained that since the new discoveries seemed to contradict scripture, those passages of scripture should be reinterpreted in a metaphorical way. He did not seek to oppose the Church nor to doubt the inspiration of scripture. The problem is that he abandoned science and started talking theology and so attracted the notice of the Roman Inquisition. If he had left theology out of his writings and discussions he would probably never have had problems. And he remained a faithful and devout Catholic to the end of his life.

A Puritan twist in our nature makes us think that anything good for us must be twice as good if it's hard to swallow. Learning Greek and Latin used to play the role of character builder, since they were considered to be as exhausting and unrewarding as digging a trench in the morning and filling it up in the afternoon. It was what made a man, or a woman -- or more likely a robot -- of you. Now math serves that purpose in many schools: your task is to try to follow rules that make sense, perhaps, to some higher beings; and in the end to accept your failure with humbled pride. As you limp off with your aching mind and bruised soul, you know that nothing in later life will ever be as difficult. What a perverse fate for one of our kind's greatest triumphs! Think how absurd it would be were music treated this way (for math and music are both excursions into sensuous structure): suffer through playing your scales, and when you're an adult you'll never have to listen to music again. And this is mathematics we're talking about, the language in which, Galileo said, the Book of the World is written. This is mathematics, which reaches down into our deepest intuitions and outward toward the nature of the universe -- mathematics, which explains the atoms as well as the stars in their courses, and lets us see into the ways that rivers and arteries branch. For mathematics itself is the study of connections: how things ideally must and, in fact, do sort together -- beyond, around, and within us. It doesn't just help us to balance our checkbooks; it leads us to see the balances hidden in the tumble of events, and the shapes of those quiet symmetries behind the random clatter of things. At the same time, we come to savor it, like music, wholly for itself. Applied or pure, mathematics gives whoever enjoys it a matchless self-confidence, along with a sense of partaking in truths that follow neither from persuasion nor faith but stand foursquare on their own. This is why it appeals to what we will come back to again and again: our **architectural instinct** -- as deep in us as any of our urges.

The conception of the universe as an intelligible order has inspired the whole development of Western science, alike in classical antiquity and in modern times; and in the formative period of modern science from Galileo to Newton the belief in God as first cause and creator of the order of nature, as well as the supreme governor and lawgiver of the moral world formed an essential part of the scientific 'Weltanschauung'.

behind the birth of modern science were men like Galileo, Boyle, Faraday, Maxwell, Newton, Pascal, and Pasteur, scientists who believed in real design in nature and in a cosmic designer, a faith that inspired them to go looking for the underlying rational order of the natural world.

Star are nothing but a source of light, so stay lightened by them.

Plato advanced into domains far vaster and more exotic than merely the pipe-smoke-garlanded realms of university philosophy departments. His ideas shaped countless cultural and intellectual trends: ideas of love, of magic and the occult, of art and imitation, of creativity through the divine frenzy of the “mad poet.” His theories on the structure of the cosmos influenced such pioneers of the Scientific Revolution as Johannes Kepler (who used the Platonic solids described in the Timaeus to determine the number of the planets and their distances from the Sun) and Galileo (who credited Plato with the theory of the common origin of the planets). His theories of the soul have been said to prefigure Sigmund Freud’s understanding of the psyche, while Friedrich Nietzsche argued in The Birth of Tragedy that Plato’s dialogues inspired the novel. Few things in heaven and earth were not dreamt of in Plato’s philosophy.

The earthquake, however, must be to every one a most impressive event: the earth, considered from our earliest childhood as the type of solidity, has oscillated like a thin crust beneath our feet; and in seeing the laboured works of man in a moment overthrown, we feel the insignificance of his boasted power.”  ― Charles Darwin     “I

Whilst Man, however well-behaved, At best is but a monkey shaved!”  ― Charles Darwin     “Discharge

Character is simply habit long continued.” ― Plato

The greatest wealth is to live content with little.

Lack of activity destroys the good condition of every human being” ― Plato

Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence, and poverty of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.” ― Plato

To avoid criticism say nothing, do nothing, be nothing.”  ― Aristotle     “A

Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.”  ― Aristotle     “I

Misfortune shows those who are not really friends.”  ― Aristotle     “Learning

We crawl by inches. What we find today we will wipe from the blackboard tomorrow and reject it—unless it shows up again the day after tomorrow. And if we find anything which would suit us, that thing we will eye with particular distrust.

He was the first to understand that unambiguous equivalence principles could be obtained only with the most inspired attention to experimental accuracy.

Galileo Galilei made an important contribution to the structure understanding and movement of the Earth, where humans did not realize that his courage at that time had an impact which helped lay strategic infrastructure points in order to maintain stability at the end of time.

I simply think that the dialogue that is intensifying between theology, philosophy, and science can first of all lead to an understanding of the objectives and the limitations of each of these disciplines and then prepare the road so that, through confrontation of ideas and constructive dialogue, each in its own specific field will contribute to the quest for that Truth which is God.

The passages are introduced and commented on according to an approach that sets out to document the event of scientific knowledge as an amazing encounter between a subject and an object, between the human being and the cosmos—an encounter in which reason shows itself in its nature of openness to the world, its demand for exhaustive meaning.

some of our colleagues even think that we are in a position to create other universes for ourselves. In other words, first we do everything possible to deny the existence or the need for God and then we try to invent a “better” god of our own making to put in his place. I personally believe that there is no necessary conflict between religious experience and science. Thus, both scientific research and the quest for God are profound expressions of our reality as human beings.

A man who dares to waste one hour of time has not discovered the value of life.”  ― Charles Darwin     “Thus,