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The Da Vinci Code vocabulary
4 famous people mentioned
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Galileo Galilei
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tags: [personage]
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Definition:[1564 - 1642]The famous mathematician and astromomer who vehemently championed Copernicus' model of the solar system. For this heresy he was tried by the inquisition, found guilty and forced to recant his claims under threats of enhanced interrogation. He remained under house arrest until his death.
painting: by Justus Sustermans, (1640)
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According to popular legend, after recanting his theory that the Earth moved around the Sun, Galileo allegedly muttered the rebellious phrase "And yet it moves". A 1640s painting by the Spanish painter Bartolomé Esteban Murillo or an artist of his school, in which the words were hidden until restoration work in 1911, depicts an imprisoned Galileo apparently gazing at the words "E pur si muove" written on the wall of his dungeon.
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"there is bad literature as there is bad pharmacy, but to condemn in a lump the most important of the fine arts seems to me a stupidity, a Gothic idea, worthy of the abominable times that imprisoned Galileo."
Gustave Flaubert. Madame Bovary.
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The white kids were going to have a chance to become Galileos and Madame Curies and Edisons and Gauguins, and our boys (the girls weren't even in on it) would try to be Jesse Owenses and Joe Louises.
Maya Angelou. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969)
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