| 1. | Oh my son, so poor in doing the right things, so rich in doing the wrong things! What great poverty it is to be so rich! |
| 2. | It is better to go near the truth and be imprisoned than to stay with the wrong and roam about freely, master Galilei. In fact, getting attached to falsity is terrible slavery, and real freedom is only next to the right. |
| 3. | If the world is turning, even the church can’t stop it; if it isn’t turning, nobody can go out and make it turn. |
| 4. | It’s very dangerous to invent something in our times; ostentatious men of the other world, who are hostile to innovations, roam about angrily. To live in peace, one has to stay away from innovations and new ideas. Innovations, like trees, attract the most destructive lightnings to themselves. |
| 5. | To go to the wine house and not to get drunk is as difficult as to dive into a pool and not get wet! |
| 6. | We are surrounded by the dry thorns of the Inquisition on all four sides; throwing around words burning like fire is the shortest way to one’s grave! |
| 7. | I never worry about how many legs my chicken has, about whether it can fly or not, about which cock was her husband; that my hen gives me eggs is enough for me! |
| 8. | For a child, parents’ warning is like a rose blooming in the brain; it opens with difficulty and fades quickly. |
| 9. | Man is a “jar of mistakes”, dear Giulia; as we have made a mistake, we are human; this proves it! |
| 10. | When the number of children goes over one, God becomes miserly in granting intelligence; he takes it from the living child and gives it to the child to be born. |
| 11. | It helps nothing to cry and complain, to pluck our hair. There’s no difference between getting mad at our fate and getting mad at rocks and stones. The ears of Fate are completely deaf; anyway, it doesn’t matter whether she hears our voices or not; when the moment comes, she only speaks of the things she has already designed and rains the orders she has already planned. |
| 12. | If absurdities could be eaten like pigs, you could immediately set up an absurdity farm and get much richer than a king!. |
| 13. | Minds with fixed ideas are like granite: they can never be penetrated with soft words and gentle persuasions. |
| 14. | I’m saying that the leaders of the church have locked the sacred cow called science in the stable and they won’t let anybody enter; they should open it immediately so that we can milk that cow in the name of humanity and thus find the truth. |
| 15. | A men whose every word is nothing but the truth is not a human being but a god! Gods do not die, whereas Aristotle is lying in a grave now. |
| 16. | Innovations, free thinking is blowing like a storm; those that stand in front of it, ignorant scholars like you, false scientists, perverse conservatives, obstinate goats, resisting mules are being crushed under the weight of these innovations. You are nothing but ants standing in front of the giants; nothing but chicks trying to challenge roaring volcanoes! |
| 17. | 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. |
| 18. | There must be a marsh in the brains of these men or there would not be so many frogs of wrong ideas gathered in their heads. |
| 19. | A fortune-teller means a braggart anyway. Don’t you know that a donkey can’t do but braying, a wolf can’t do but howling, a horse can’t do but neighing, and a fortune-teller can’t do but telling lies? |
| 20. | The “stream” we call science always flows forward; sometimes reactionary beavers block its flow, but the stream is never defeated by this; it accumulates, gathers strength; its waters get over the barrage and continue on their course. The advancement of science is the advancement of God, for science is nothing but human intelligence, and human intelligence is the most valuable treasure God has bequeathed us. |
| 21. | History of science is a relay race, my painter friend. Copernicus took over his flag from Aristarchus, from Cicero, from Plutarch; and Galileo took that flag over from Copernicus. |
| 22. | Truths are immortal, my dear friend; they are immortal like God! What we call a falsity is like a fruit; it has a certain number of days; it is bound to decay. Whereas, what we call truth is like gold; days, months, even centuries can hide gold, can overlook it but they can never make it decay. |
| 23. | My dear friend, to be both powerful and fair has always been difficult for mankind. Power and justice have always been seen like day and night; this being the case, when one of them is there the other disappears. |
| 24. | Religion now has degenerated and it has turned into a wolf; it has opened its mouth to show his ugly teeth; its spreading fear instead of love; and science has hidden in a corner like a lamb, trembling with fear! |
| 25. | A stone thrown up into the air is bound to fall down one day, and absolute power is like a huge stone thrown up into the air. |
| 26. | I know it too well, my friend. Fresh water does not come out of a bitter spring; you don’t expect to get rose perfume coming out of a rubbish heap, neither scorpions to kiss people! |
| 27. | New ideas seem like frightening ghosts to people at the beginning; they run away from them for a long time, but they get tired of it in the end! |