"The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church."
— Ferdinand Magellan
The Church Says The Earth Is
The church says the earth is flat, but I know that it is round, for I have seen the shadow on the moon, and I have more faith in a shadow than in the church.
About this quote
This quote is definitively apocryphal and misattributed to Ferdinand Magellan. The earliest traceable source is the American orator Robert Green Ingersoll, who wrote in his 1873 essay "Individuality" that he believed Magellan had said it — without citing any source. Historians note the attribution is implausible on its face: the sphericity of the Earth was accepted by educated Europeans long before Magellan's time, and the Church did not teach a flat earth. The quote likely reflects 19th-century secularist rhetoric rather than anything Magellan said or thought.
Source
Attributed, likely apocryphal via Robert G. Ingersoll