Alan J. CainA quotation that is often attributed to Galileo is:
‘You cannot teach a man anything, you can only help him to find it within himself.’
This quotation, sometimes with minor differences (e.g. ‘discover’ instead of ‘find’) can be found in countless books, articles, web pages. But there is never a citation, just an attribution.
This always makes me suspicious.
Assuming that Galileo would have written it in Latin or perhaps Italian, I made some guesses at the original text and searched. This immediately led me to an Italian-language blog post [https://lezionidallaletteratura.wordpress.com/2019/07/16/la-verita-secondo-internet-o-galileo/] whose author had been equally suspicious and who argued — I think correctly — that the quotation is actually a paraphrase of a passage in Galileo’s ‘Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems’ (Drake translation, p.157–8):
‘I say to you that if one does not know the truth by himself, it is impossible for anyone to make him know it. I can indeed point out things to you, things being neither true nor false; but as for the true — that is, the necessary; that which cannot possibly be otherwise — every man of ordinary intelligence either knows this by himself or it is impossible for him to ever know it.’
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