Galileo Galilei Quotes

The philosopher has never killed any priests, whereas the priest has killed a great many philosophers.

No orthodox church ever had power that it did not endeavor to make people think its way by force and flame.

Where orthodoxy is optional, orthodoxy will sooner or later be proscribed.

Kinsey would identify himself with Galileo in moments of feelings of persecution.

What survived as orthodox Christianity did so by suppressing and forcibly eliminating a lot of other material.

The tale is one of an evil time, When souls were fettered and thought was crime, And heresy's whisper above its breath Meant shameful scourging and bonds and death!

There was a time when religion ruled the world. It is known as The Dark Ages.

We condemn you, Michael Servetus, to be bound and taken to Champel and there attached to a stake and burned with your book to ashes.

Not only were all Christians thus made to feel that it was their highest duty to aid in the extermination of heretics, but they were taught that they must denounce them to the authorities regardless of all considerations, human or divine. No tie of kindred served as an excuse for concealing heresy. The son must denounce the father, the husband was guilty if he did not deliver his wife to a frightful death. Every human bond was severed by the guilt of heresy; children were taught to desert their parents, and even the sacrament of matrimony could not unite an orthodox wife to a misbelieving husband. No pledge was to remain unbroken. It was an old rule that faith was not to be kept with heretics

Heretical—one which is contrary to Catholic truth. Erroneous—that which does not directly contradict the faith, but some conclusion evidently deducible from the faith. Savoring of heresy—not contradicting the faith by evident consequence, but by very probable and morally certain consequence. Ill-sounding—that which has a double sense, one Catholic and the other heretic, but usually accepted in the latter. Rash—that which is not governed by reason and lacks all authority. Scandalous or offensive to pious ears—that which gives occasion to another to err, such as ‘heretics are to be tolerated and not to be slain.’ Schismatic or seditious—tending to disrupt the unity of the Church. Impious—contrary to Catholic piety. Insulting—defamatory of some Christian profession or illustrious person. Blasphemous—insulting to God.

Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution—unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand—it burns where it is not allowed to shine.

[Spanish] unreasoning religious ardor culminated in the Inquisition, established for the purpose of securing the supreme good of unblemished purity and uniformity of belief. Nothing was allowed to stand in the way of this, and no sacrifice was deemed too great for its accomplishment. All officials, from the king downward, were sworn to its support, and the sinister influence which it exercised was proportioned to the enormous power which it wielded.

Our forefathers found the evils of free thinking more to be endured than the evils of inquest or suppression. This is because thoughtful, bold and independent minds are essential to the wise and considered self-government.

It was morality that burned the books of the ancient sages, and morality that halted the free inquiry of the Golden Age and substituted for it the credulous imbecility of the Age of Faith. It was a fixed moral code and a fixed theology which robbed the human race of a thousand years by wasting them upon alchemy, heretic-burning , witchcraft and sacerdotalism.

In England Giordano Bruno had given lectures on the plurality of worlds, and in that country had written, in Italian, his most important works. It added not a little to the exasperation against him, that he was perpetually declaiming against the insincerity, the impostures, of his persecutors - that wherever he went he found skepticism varnished over and concealed by hypocrisy; and that it was not against the belief of men, but against their pretended belief, that he was fighting; that he was struggling with an orthodoxy that had neither morality nor faith.

It is not the idea as such which the censor attacks, whether it be heresy or radicalism or obscenity. He attacks the circulation of the idea among the classes which in his judgment are not to be trusted with the idea.

I have always been on the side of the heretics, against those who burned them, because the heretics so often turned out to be right....Dead, but right.

Freedom of speech is useless without freedom of thought.

If there's one American belief I hold above all others, it's that those who would set themselves up in judgment on matters of what is "right" and what is "best" should be given no rest; that they should have to defend their behavior most stringently. ... As a nation, we've been through too many fights to preserve our rights of free thought to let them go just because some prude with a highlighter doesn't approve of them

Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to suggest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them from the tyranny of custom.

Freedom of speech implies the world isn’t defined. It is meaningful when people are allowed to see the world their way.

The stony-minded orthodox were right in fearing the first movement of new knowledge and free thought. It has gone on, and will go on, irresistibly, until some day we shall have no respect for an alleged "truth" which cannot stand the full blaze of knowledge, the full force of active thought.

Those who begin by burning books will end by burning people.

All the persecutors declare against each other mortal war, while the philosopher, oppressed by them all, contents himself with pitying them.