What Galileo Said

Poul Anderson fans are familiar with the following dialogue:

Manse Everard: "E pur si muove."

Wanda Tamberly: "Huh? Oh, yeah. What Galileo muttered, after they made him agree the earth sits still. 'Nevertheless, it moves.' Right?"

-Poul Anderson, The Shield of Time (New York, 1991), PART ONE, 1987 A. D., p. 27.

Later:

Everard: "Actually, Galileo never said what I quoted, under his breath or aloud. It's a myth." (p. 28)

Anderson's text then gives us what cannot be so easily conveyed in a dramatic dialogue, Everard's inner comment:

"The kind of myth humans live by, more than they do by facts." (ibid.)

Rereading Robert Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky, we find Hugh Hoyland condemned for heresy when he claims that the Ship is not the entire universe. He responds:

"'Nevertheless - Nevertheless - it still moves!'"

-Orphans of the Sky, p. 43.

Heinlein maybe expects his readers to recognize the reference whereas Anderson's characters explain it.