Galileo Galilei Quotes

I've always been into things like exploring and science on the frontiers. I had pictures of space up in my room way back in middle school, right next to the boy band posters!

Men of strong minds and who think for themselves, should not be discouraged on finding occasionally that some of their best ideas have been anticipated by former writers; they will neither anathematize others nor despair themselves. They will rather go on discovering things before discovered, until they are rewarded with a land hitherto unknown, an empire indisputably their own, both right of conquest and of discovery.

I know of nothing more inspiring than that of making discoveries for ones self.

I think the people who are saying jazz has to sound a particular way, or "what you're doing isn't jazz," are just scared because they can't do it. A lot of them just aren't talented enough to do anything new, honestly. It's the people who are talented enough and who have the open mind and who are forward-thinkers are the ones who are doing something new. You tend to hate on what you can't produce.

Every man's foremost task is the actualization of his unique, unprecedented and never-recurring potentialities, and not the repetition of something that another, and be it even the greatest, has already achieved.

The human mind has no more power of inventing a new value than of planting a new sun in the sky or a new primary color in the spectrum.

New ideas come into this world somewhat like falling meteors, with a flash and an explosion.

You mustn't expect me to repeat myself. My past doesn't interest me. I would rather copy others than copy myself. In that way I should at least be giving them something new. I love discovering things.

I have been speculating last night what makes a man a discoverer of undiscovered things; and a most perplexing problem it is. Many men who are very clever - much cleverer than the discoverers - never originate anything.

Columbus's eggs lie around by the hundreds of thousands, but Columbuses are met with less frequency.

He dared to do what men and women don't even dare to think. And look what he's done already: he's torn open the sky, he's opened the way to another world. Who else has ever done that? Who else could think of it?

do what only a true artist can do ... pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation

It has cost me years of thought to arrive at certain results, by many believed to be unattainable, for which there are now numerous claimants, and the number of these is rapidly increasing, like that of the colonels in the South after the war.

Innovation has a lot to do with your ability to recognise surprising and unusual phenomena.

A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.

Where there is no novelty, there can be no curiosity.

The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another.

This is a weakness of the world. Someone thinks they've discovered something for the first time. They want to be authoritative about it.

originality" is everyone's aim, and novel techniques are as much prized as new scientific discoveries. [T.S.] Eliot states it with surprising naïveté: "It is exactly as wasteful for a poet to do what has been done already as for a biologist to rediscover Mendel's discoveries.

The artist is always beginning. Any work of art which is not a beginning, an invention, a discovery is of little worth.

Don't keep forever on the public road, going only where others have gone. Leave the beaten track occasionally and dive into the woods. You will be certain to find something you have never seen before. Of course it will be a little thing, but do not ignore it. One discovery will lead to another, and before you know it, you will have something worth thinking about to occupy your mind, and really big discoveries are the result of thought.

Some people have great ideas maybe once or twice in their life, and then they discover electricity or fire or outer space or something. I mean, the kind of brilliant ideas that change the whole world. Some people never have them at all... I get them two or three times a week.

See, I think our whole society is much too problem-solving oriented. It is far more interesting to participate in 'problem creation'... You know, ask yourself an interesting enough question and your attempt to find a tailor-made solution to that question will push you to a place where, pretty soon, you'll find yourself all by your lonesome - which I think is a more interesting place to be.

Always choose the new, the less travelled by. Always choose the unknown, the less travelled by.

I pay attention to what's going on around me. I'm always looking for new energy, new talent, new voices. When you do that I think it's easier to come up with fresh ideas. It's not that my career has been based on surprising people, but it's been about challenging myself - to constantly do new things that are going to broaden my own mind and in the process, hopefully, connect with other people.