All Quotes

“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. Translation by Stillman Drake in Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo”

“It seems to me that it was well said by Madama Serenissima, and insisted on by your reverence, that the Holy Scripture cannot err, and that the decrees therein contained are absolutely true and inviolable. But I should have in your place added that, though Scripture cannot err, its expounders and interpreters are liable to err in many ways ; and one error in particular would be most grave and most frequent, if we always stopped short at the literal signification of the words.”

“Some years ago, as Your Serene Highness well knows, I discovered in the heavens many things that had not been seen before our own age. The novelty of these things, as well as some consequences which followed from them in contradiction to the physical notions commonly held among academic philosophers, stirred up against me no small number of professors”

“Persisting in their original resolve to destroy me and everything mine by any means they can think of, these men are aware of my views in astronomy and philosophy. They know that as to the arrangement of the parts of the universe , I hold the sun to be situated motionless in the center of the revolution of the celestial orbs while the earth revolves about the sun. They know also that I support this position not only by refuting the arguments of Ptolemy and Aristotle , but by producing many counter”

“To this end they make a shield of their hypocritical zeal for religion. They go about invoking the Bible, which they would have minister to their deceitful purposes. Contrary to the sense of the Bible and the intention of the holy Fathers, if I am not mistaken, they would extend such authorities until even in purely physical matters”

“Copernicus never discusses matters of religion or faith , nor does he use argument that depend in any way upon the authority of sacred writings which he might have interpreted erroneously. ... He 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.”

“Nature … is inexorable and immutable; she never transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men. For that reason it appears that nothing physical which sense”

“I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them.”

“The intention of the Holy Ghost is to teach us how one goes to heaven, not how heaven goes.”

“The only thing we learn from history is that we learn nothing from history.”

“Truth is found in the whole, not in the part.”

“The owl of Minerva spreads its wings only with the falling of the dusk.”

“What is reasonable is real; what is real is reasonable.”

“Education is the art of making man ethical.”

“Nothing great in the world has been accomplished without passion.”

“To be independent of public opinion is the first formal condition of achieving anything great.”

“The totality is the true.”

“The courage of the truth is the first condition of philosophical study.”

“Freedom is the highest state of mind.”

“Philosophic Radicals ,”

“Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it... In The World”

“Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it... In The World (18 July 1894), Music in London 1890”

“No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means ; and I have no reason to hope that Mr Coote may be an exception to the rule. "The Living Pictures", The Saturday Review , LXXIX (April 6, 1895), 443; reprinted in Our Theatres in the Nineties (1932). Vol. 1. London: Constable & Co. 79”

“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity . Answers to Nine Questions (September 1896), answers to nine questions submitted by Clarence Rook, who had interviewed him in 1895”

“Visits to Valhalla: The Ectasy And the Agony”

“We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it. Candida , Act I”

“I'm only a beer teetotaler, not a champagne teetotaler. I don't like beer. Candida , Act III”

“We don't bother much about dress and manners in England, because as a nation we don't dress well and we've no manners. You Never Can Tell , Act I”

“The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life. You Never Can Tell , Act II”

“The real drama of Evangelicalism”