Long experience has taught me this about the status of mankind with regard to matters requiring thought: the less people know and understand about them, the more positively they attempt to argue concerning them, while on the other hand to know and understand a multitude of things renders men cautious in passing judgment upon anything new.

Scripture is a book about going to Heaven. It’s not a book about how the heavens go

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

I think that in the discussion of natural problems we ought to begin not with the Scriptures, but with experiments, and demonstrations.

Names and attributes must be accommodated to the essence of things, and not the essence to the names, since things come first and names afterwards.

We cannot teach people anything; we can only help them discover it within themselves.

It vexes me when they would constrain science by the authority of the Scriptures, and yet do not consider themselves bound to answer reason and experiment.

Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.

Philosophy is written in that great book which ever lies before our eyes – I mean the universe – but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols, in which it is written.

I give infinite thanks to God, who has been pleased to make me the first observer of marvelous things.

The Milky Way is nothing else but a mass of innumerable stars planted together in clusters.

By denying scientific principles, one may maintain any paradox.

God is known by nature in his works, and by doctrine in his revealed word.

Knowing thyself, that is the greatest wisdom.

It is surely harmful to souls to make it a heresy to believe what is proved.

Nature…does not act by means of many things when it can do so by means of a few.

Two truths cannot contradict one another.

Facts which at first seem improbable will, even on scant explanation, drop the cloak which has hidden them and stand forth in naked and simple beauty.

In the long run my observations have convinced me that some men, reasoning preposterously, first establish some conclusion in their minds which, either because of its being their own or because of their having received it from some person who has their entire confidence, impresses them so deeply that one finds it impossible ever to get it out of their heads.

Where the senses fail us, reason must step in.

We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.

See now the power of truth.

If I were again beginning my studies, I would follow the advice of Plato and start with mathematics.

And yet it moves.

You may force me to say what you wish; you may revile me for saying what I do. But it moves.

I’ve loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night.

The more I study science, the more I believe in God.

Nature is relentless and unchangeable, and it is indifferent as to whether its hidden reasons and actions are understandable to man or not.

Measure what is measurable, and make measurable what is not so.

Who would dare assert that we know all there is to be known?

Passion is the genesis of genius.

The Bible shows the way to go to heaven, not the way the heavens go.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

Mathematics is the key and door to the sciences.

I am inclined to think that the authority of Holy Scripture is intended to convince men of those truths which are necessary for their salvation, which, being far above man’s understanding, can not be made credible by any learning, or any other means than revelation by the Holy Spirit.

To be able to really ask a question is the key to understanding.

You cannot teach a man anything; you can only help him find it within himself.

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.

In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.

The book of nature is written in the language of mathematics.

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

Wine is sunlight, held together by water.

Nothing occurs contrary to nature except the impossible, and that never occurs.

All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them.

Mathematics is the language with which God has written the universe.