In time you may discover everything that can be discovered, and still your progress will only be progress away from humanity. The distance between you and them can one day become so great that your joyous cry over some new gain could be answered by an universal shriek of horror.
Interpretation
Advancements in knowledge can alienate one from humanity.
Galileo Galilei warns that as we make discoveries and advancements, we may distance ourselves from the human experience. This could lead to a situation where what is celebrated as progress might be met with horror by the collective human society due to its implications or consequences, highlighting the importance of considering the human aspect in our pursuits of knowledge.
In practice
During a lecture on the ethical implications of artificial intelligence, this quote can be used to emphasize the importance of considering humanity in technological progress.
It has always seemed to me extreme presumptuousness on the part of those who want to make human ability the measure of what nature can and knows how to do, since, when one comes down to it, there is not one effect in nature, no matter how small, that even the most speculative minds can fully understand.
We must say that there are as many squares as there are numbers.
Science proceeds more by what it has learned to ignore than what it takes into account.
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.
Philosophy is written in this grand book, the universe, which stands continually open to our gaze. But the book cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language and read the letters in which it is composed.
That sculpture is more admirable than painting for the reason that it contains relief and painting does not is completely false. ... Rather, how much more admirable the painting must be considered, if having no relief at all, it appears to have as much as sculpture!
You are afraid to die, and you’re afraid to live. What a way to exist.
From Paul to Stalin, the popes who have chosen Caesar have prepared the way for Caesars who quickly learn to despise popes.
[T]o preserve the republican form and principles of our Constitution and cleave to the salutary distribution of powers which that [the Constitution] has established . . . are the two sheet anchors of our Union. If driven from either, we shall be in danger of foundering.
Democracy not only requires equality but also an unshakable conviction in the value of each person, who is then equal
Men, forever tempted to lift the veil of the future-with the aid of computers or horoscopes or the intestines of sacrificial animals-have a worse record to show in these sciences than in almost any scientific endeavor.
Americans swept away the instruments of English hereditary inequality - entails and titles of nobility - even before we had a constitution.
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