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Who really said it

It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle

Not Galileo — a sentence found in none of his works Unknown Origin unidentified · in print by 1955, when Giorgio de Santillana pinned it on the Dialogue
Disputed Rights unconfirmed

Wikiquote lists this among Galileo’s misattributed quotations ↗, and the trail it gives is unusually specific: the historian Giorgio de Santillana attributed the remark to the Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems in The Crime of Galileo (1955), “but it does not appear there.” The Fourth Day of the Dialogue does contain a vaguely similar exchange, where Salviati asks Simplicio why he reaches for a miracle to explain the tides. The sentence’s memorable phrase, however, is borrowed from somewhere else entirely: Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici ↗ is where someone is put “to the refuge of a miracle” — and the someone is St Augustine.

Last verified 21 Aug 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle” Not Galileo; the sentence appears in none of his works. Giorgio de Santillana attributed it to the Dialogue in The Crime of Galileo (1955), where Wikiquote records that it is not to be found. Its distinctive phrase comes from Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), used of St Augustine and De Civitate Dei XVI.7. Traced by Quotle.info.

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Galileo Galilei. Use the credit shown above instead.

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We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the themes of doubt and knowledge. Theme: "It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

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Provenance

Where the phrase really comes from

Attributed to
Galileo’s Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632) — where it does not appear
Attributed to the Dialogue by
Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (1955)
Source of the phrase
Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (first authorized edition, 1643)
Whom Browne meant
St Augustine — the edition’s own note reads “St Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7)”

There is another secret, not contained in the Scripture, which is more hard to comprehend, and put the honest Father to the refuge of a miracle; and that is, not only how the distinct pieces of the world, and divided islands, should be first planted by men, but inhabited by tigers, panthers, and bears. Browne, Religio Medici

The phrase in its original setting. Browne is not talking about astronomy or about anyone’s ignorance: he is puzzling over how predators reached remote islands after the Flood, and noting that the difficulty drove Augustine to invoke a miracle. The Gutenberg edition’s note on “the honest Father” reads, in full, “St Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7).”

Religio Medici, full text at Project Gutenberg

How we verified this

  • Wikiquote’s Galileo page files the sentence under “Misattributed” ↗ with the finding that de Santillana attributed it to the Dialogue in 1955 “but it does not appear there,” and that “the specific wording comes instead from Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici.”
  • Browne’s sentence is in the Project Gutenberg text of Religio Medici ↗: a secret “more hard to comprehend” that “put the honest Father to the refuge of a miracle” — how tigers, panthers and bears reached islands after the Deluge. The same edition’s endnote identifies the Father: “St Augustine (De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7).”
  • That chapter is exactly the one Browne meant. City of God XVI.7 ↗ is headed “Whether Even the Remotest Islands Received Their Fauna from the Animals Which Were Preserved, Through the Deluge, in the Ark,” and among the possibilities Augustine weighs is that “it cannot be denied that by the intervention of angels they might be transferred by God’s order or permission.”
  • The same Wikiquote page shows what Galileo did write in this vein — “We seek not what God could have done but what He has done… God could have caused birds to fly with bones of solid gold… but He wanted to make their bones, flesh and feathers very light” — sourced there to notes in a copy of Jean-Baptiste Morin’s 1631 book on the earth’s motion ↗, and notes that English sources wrongly tack the “refuge of a miracle” sentence onto it.

No rights status is asserted for the quoted sentence, because it has no identified author or first publication and cannot honestly be classified. Thomas Browne’s Religio Medici, the book the phrase comes from, dates from 1643 and is public domain — Project Gutenberg distributes it freely. Giorgio de Santillana’s The Crime of Galileo (1955), by contrast, remains in copyright.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

Fact-check

A sentence assembled from other people’s

This is not a garbled Galileo line. It is a sentence with no original, whose most memorable words were written by an English doctor about a fifth-century bishop.

Galileo Galilei Misattributed

Wikiquote lists it among his misattributed quotations ↗: de Santillana placed it in the Dialogue in 1955, “but it does not appear there.” The nearest real exchange, on the Fourth Day, has Salviati asking Simplicio why he resorts to a miracle to explain the tides — a different question, in different words.

Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643) Phrase-maker, not the author

Browne writes that a difficulty “put the honest Father to the refuge of a miracle” — the passage is in the Gutenberg text ↗, and the “honest Father” is identified in the same edition’s notes as St Augustine, De Civ. Dei, xvi. 7 ↗. He supplies the phrase and nothing else; the rest of the sentence is not his.

Galileo, notes in a copy of Morin (1631) Genuine passage, not the source of this sentence

Wikiquote sources a real Galileo passage to those marginalia ↗: “We seek not what God could have done but what He has done… God could have caused birds to fly with bones of solid gold… but He wanted to make their bones, flesh and feathers very light.” The page notes that English sources wrongly finish that passage with the “refuge of a miracle” sentence.

Galileo did think that appealing to miracles was a way of not doing physics, and he said so in his own words in the Morin marginalia. But the sentence people quote for it is not one of his ↗ — and the phrase that makes it quotable was coined by Thomas Browne, about the Flood.

Context

How a good paraphrase becomes a bad quotation

The sentence is doing honest work. Galileo’s standing complaint against his Aristotelian opponents was that they explained away inconvenient results by appealing to what God could have arranged, rather than examining what He had. Reaching for a miracle whenever the mechanics ran out was, to him, a refusal to do the physics. A biographer summarising that in one sharp English sentence is not distorting him.

The trouble starts when the summary is set in quotation marks and given a page reference. Then it stops being a gloss and becomes evidence — and readers who go looking for it in the Dialogue find nothing, because there is nothing to find. The same page of Wikiquote that debunks this line also carries a second, cleaner version of the same error, with English sources appending the sentence to a genuine Galileo passage as though it were its conclusion.

A fair summary of Galileo. Not a sentence of Galileo’s.

Browne, Augustine, and the tigers on the islands

Browne’s problem is zoological, not astronomical. Granted a universal Flood and a single ark landing on Ararat, how did tigers, panthers and bears end up on remote islands — and why does America teem with predators but lack horses? He calls it “another secret, not contained in the Scripture” ↗ and says it drove the honest Father to the refuge of a miracle.

Augustine had indeed been there. City of God XVI.7 ↗ weighs whether the beasts swam, whether men carried them for sport, and allows that “it cannot be denied that by the intervention of angels they might be transferred by God’s order or permission.” That is the refuge Browne means.

So the phrase arrives in the Galileo sentence carrying an argument about post-diluvian fauna, three centuries and one discipline away from the tides of the Dialogue. It is a good phrase. It was never about Galileo’s opponents.

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Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

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Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Wikiquote: Galileo Galileien.wikiquote.org

Files this sentence under “Misattributed,” names de Santillana’s 1955 attribution, points to Browne for the wording, and prints the genuine Galileo passage from his notes on Morin.
Religio Medici (Project Gutenberg)gutenberg.org

Sir Thomas Browne’s 1643 book, with Hydriotaphia and the Letter to a Friend. Contains “the refuge of a miracle” and the endnote identifying Augustine.
Augustine, City of God, Book XVI, ch. 7en.wikisource.org

The chapter Browne’s note cites: whether the remotest islands received their fauna from the ark, and Augustine’s recourse to angelic transfer.
The Crime of Galileo (1955)archive.org

Catalogue record for Giorgio de Santillana’s book, the earliest attribution of the sentence that has been traced.
Wikipedia: Galileo Galileien.wikipedia.org

Life dates (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) and the history of the Dialogue, the trial and the recantation.
Wikipedia: Sir Thomas Browneen.wikipedia.org

The Norwich physician and prose stylist (19 October 1605 – 19 October 1682) whose phrase this sentence borrows.

The author

Nobody has been identified

Unknown

Origin unidentified · in circulation as Galileo by 1955

The sentence is a composite with no traced author. Its rhetorical shape — accusing an opponent of hiding ignorance behind divine intervention — is a fair summary of an argument Galileo really made, and its most quotable phrase is lifted from a book by an English physician who was using it about St Augustine and the repopulation of islands after the Flood. Somewhere between the two, in English and probably in the twentieth century, a sentence formed that nobody wrote and everybody attributes.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Source

No source in Galileo. Attributed to the Dialogue in Giorgio de Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (1955), where Wikiquote records that it does not appear. The phrase “to the refuge of a miracle” is from Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici (1643), of St Augustine, De Civitate Dei XVI.7.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘It is only in order to shield your ignorance that you put the Lord at every turn to the refuge of a miracle’?” Last verified 21 Aug 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/it-is-only-in-order-to-shield-your-ignorance-that-you-put/

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