Allen Roberts > Recent Status Updates

Still in the introduction (which is the first third of the book) and already enjoying this immensely!

“Dumbfounded, I stood before the court, trying to figure out if there was a state of being between “guilty” and “innocent.” Why were those my only alternatives? I thought. Why couldn’t I be “neither” or “both”? After a long pause, I finally faced the bench and said, “Your Honor, I plead human.” pp. 23-24

“To see the future would be a horrible curse, I am quite sure. Let me not be a prophet in my own country, but a scientist. I only want to be a scientist.”
pp. 612-613.

Now at the part where Galileo gets railroaded by the Inquisition… 😡

“Courage is not something that you already have that makes you brave when the tough times start. Courage is what you earn when you’ve been through the tough times and you discover they aren’t so tough after all.” p. 130

“…[W]hen I behold men who crawl about on an atom—for that is what the earth is, being merely a point in the universe—when I behold men setting themselves up for models of Providence, I find it impossible to imagine how such extravagance can be combined with such littleness.” p. 166

“But surpassing all stupendous inventions, what sublimity of mind was his who dreamed of finding means to communicate his deepest thoughts to any other person, though distant by mighty intervals of space and time!” p. 465

Sì, certo, signor Galilei. Tale è il potere della parola scritta.

“Astrology is the prostitution of mathematics.” p. 416

Well, this book is fuckin cray-cray—Quite enjoyably so! 😜

This book gets more and more interesting all the time!! 🤩

“Nature likes to work, generate, produce, and dissolve always and everywhere. These metamorphoses are her highest achievements. Who therefore wants to fix a limit for the human mind? Who wants to assert that everything which is knowable in the world is already known?” p. 246