The picture (seen here: http://www.mta.info/mta/news/releases/pdf/TrainThought-Science.pdf) is one of the first "Train of Thought" posters on the NY Transit trains. The inscription is a rendering of this quote:
"Philosophy is written in this grand book— I mean the universe— which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth." (1623)
He also said:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."
(As quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization: problems and sources in history (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53)
More interesting Galileo quotes: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei
"Philosophy is written in this grand book— I mean the universe— which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth." (1623)
He also said:
"I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with senses, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use and by some other means to give us knowledge which we can attain by them."
(As quoted in Aspects of Western Civilization: problems and sources in history (1988) by Perry McAdow Rogers, p. 53)
More interesting Galileo quotes: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Galileo_Galilei