Galileo Galilei Quotes

The mind God is looking for in man is a doubting, questioning mind, not a dogmatic mind; dogmatic reasoning is wrong reasoning. Dogmatic reason ties a huge rock to a man’s foot and stops him forever from advancing.

We cannot infer that because sciences of things divine and human are full of controversies and quarrels, therefore their whole subject-matter is uncertain ; for there have been many persons so enamoured of contradiction, as to turn into ridicule geometrical axioms.

The belief of our Reason is an Exercise of Faith, and Faith is an Act of Reason.

It is always more difficult to fight against faith than against knowledge.

People who dismiss science in favor of religion sometimes confuse the challenge of rigorously understanding the world with a deliberate intellectual exclusion that leads them to mistrust scientists and, to their detriment, what they discover.

I think that there's a strain in journalism that believes that anyone who surrenders him- or herself to faith and to belief necessarily checks reason and rationality at the door.

Science stands for rational thought, faith for superstition and unreason.

Faith accepts no commands. It accepts only what comes to it by way of reasoned conviction.

Some like to understand what they believe in. Others like to believe in what they understand.

The truth is that Christian theology, like every other theology, is not only opposed to the scientific spirit; it is also opposed to all other attempts at rational thinking.

Faith feels itself secure neither with universal consent, nor with tradition, nor with authority. It seeks support of its enemy, reason.

If faith is a valid tool of knowledge, then anything can be true 'by faith,' and therefore nothing is true. If the only reason you can accept a claim is by faith, then you are admitting that the claim does not stand on its own merits.

There is more religion in men's science, than there is science in their religion.

Science provides a much more satisfactory way to seek answers than does any religion.

The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.

Religion works on some people but not on everyone, because it says, 'Stop thinking and accept what I tell you.' That's not valid for people who want to think and reflect.

If we did not have rational souls, we would not be able to believe.

Between understanding and faith immediate connections must subsist.

The man of science is a poor philosopher.

Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.

It is time that scientists and other public intellectuals observed that the contest between faith and reason is zero-sum.

Religion asks you to believe things without questioning, and technology and science always encourage you to ask hard questions and why it is important in science and technology. So I was always interested in science and technology.

Science, we are repeatedly told, is the most reliable form of knowledge about the world because it is based on testable hypotheses. Religion, by contrast, is based on faith. The term 'doubting Thomas' well illustrates the difference.

Faith is not contrary to reason.

In science, a healthy skepticism is a professional necessity, whereas in religion, having belief without evidence is regarded as a virtue.