Indeed, I think we may concede to our Academician, without flattery, his claim that in the principle [principio, i. e., accelerated motion] laid down… - Galileo Galilei

THERE is certainly something very noble and large-minded in the intention of those who have endeavoured to protect from envy the noble achievements of distinguished men, and to rescue their names, worthy of immortality, from oblivion and decay.

I cannot sufficiently admire the eminence of those men's wits, that have received and held it to be true, and with the sprightliness of their judgments offered such violence to their own senses, as that they have been able to prefer that which their reason dictated to them, to that which sensible experiments represented most manifestly to the contrary. ...I cannot find any bounds for my admiration, how that reason was able in Aristarchus and Copernicus, to commit such a rape on their senses, as in despite thereof to make herself mistress of their credulity.

My dear Kepler, what would you say of the learned here, who, replete with the pertinacity of the asp, have steadfastly refused to cast a glance through the telescope? What shall we make of this? Shall we laugh, or shall we cry?