Johannes Kepler Quotes
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If this [the Mysterium cosmographicum] is published, others will perhaps make discoveries I might have reserved for myself. But we are all ephemeral creatures (and none more so than I). I have, therefore, for the Glory of God, who wants to be recognized from the book of Nature, that these things may be published as quickly as possible. The more others build on my work the happier I shall be.
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Eyesight should learn from reason.
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Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.
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The Earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides, is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
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If God himself has waited six thousand years for someone to contemplate his works, my book can wait for a hundred.
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Nature uses as little as possible of anything.
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I am a Lutheran astrologer, I throw away the nonsense and keep the hard kernel.
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Where there is matter, there is geometry.
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If my false figures came near to the facts, this happened merely by chance ... These comments are not worth printing. Yet it gives me pleasure to remember how many detours I had to make, along how many walls I had to grope in the darkness of my ignorance until I found the door which lets in the light of the truth ... In such manner did I dream of the truth.
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Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God.
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The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times.
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Nothing which consists of corporeal matter is absolutely light, but that is comparatively lighter which is rarer, either by its own nature, or by accidental heat. And it is not to be thought that light bodies are escaping to the surface of the universe while they are carried upwards, or that they are not attracted by the earth. They are attracted, but in a less degree, and so are driven outwards by the heavy bodies; which being done, they stop, and are kept by the earth in their own place.
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I had the intention of becoming a theologian...but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for 'the heavens declare the glory of God.'
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Some of what these pamphlets [of astrological forecasts] say will turn out to be true, but most of it time and experience will expose as empty and worthless. The latter part will be forgotten literally: written on the winds while the former will be carefully entered in people's memories, as is usual with the crowd.
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The moon... is a mass, akin to the mass of the earth, attracts the waters by a magnetic force, not because they are liquid, but because they possess earthy substance, and so share in the movements of a heavy body.
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Either... the moving intelligences of the planets are weakest in those that are farthest from the sun, or... there is one moving intelligence in the sun, the common center, forcing them all round, but those most violently which are nearest, and that it languishes in some sort and grows weaker at the most distant, because of the remoteness and the attenuation of the virtue.
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If the earth were not round, heavy bodies would not tend from every side in a straight line towards the center of the earth, but to different points from different sides.
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Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing?
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As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking on the moon and Jupiter... Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse.
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In theology we must consider the predominance of authority; in philosophy the predominance of reason.
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Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question.
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...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.
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If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,-then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.
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So, Fabricius, I already have this: that the most true path of the planet [Mars] is an ellipse, which Dürer also calls an oval, or certainly so close to an ellipse that the difference is insensible.