Best 93 quotes of Johannes Kepler on MyQuotes

After the birth of printing books became widespread. Hence everyone throughout Europe devoted himself to the study of literature... Every year, especially since 1563, the number of writings published in every field is greater than all those produced in the past thousand years. Through them there has today been created a new theology and a new jurisprudence; the Paracelsians have created medicine anew and the Copernicans have created astronomy anew. I really believe that at last the world is alive, indeed seething, and that the stimuli of these remarkable conjunctions did not act in vain.

A mind is accustomed to mathematical deduction, when confronted with the faulty foundations of astrology, resists a long, long time, like an obstinate mule, until compelled by beating and curses to put its foot into that dirty puddle.

A most unfailing experience... of the excitement of sublunary (that is, human) natures by the conjunctions and aspects of the planets has instructed and compelled my unwilling belief.

Astronomy would not provide me with bread if men did not entertain hopes of reading the future in the heavens.

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.

As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking on the Moon and Jupiter. Who would have believed that a huge ocean could be crossed more peacefully and safely than the the narrow expanse of the Adriatic, the Baltic Sea or the English Channel? Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse.

But although the attractive virtue of the earth extends upwards, as has been said, so very far, yet if any stone should be at a distance great enough to become sensible compared with the earth's diameter, it is true that on the motion of the earth such a stone would not follow altogether; its own force of resistance would be combined with the attractive force of the earth, and thus it would extricate itself in some degree from the motion of the earth.

Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use.

Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing?

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.

Every corporeal substance, so far forth as it is corporeal, has a natural fitness for resting in every place where it may be situated by itself beyond the sphere of influence of a body cognate with it.

Eyesight should learn from reason.

...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.

Geometry existed before the creation. It is co-eternal with the mind of God...Geometry provided God with a model for the Creation.

Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God

Geometry is one and eternal shining in the mind of God. That share in it accorded to men is one of the reasons that Man is the image of God.

Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.

Geometry, which before the origin of things was coeternal with the divine mind and is God himself (for what could there be in God which would not be God himself?), supplied God with patterns for the creation of the world, and passed over to Man along with the image of God; and was not in fact taken in through the eyes.

God gives every animal the means of saving its life-why object if he gives astrology to the astronomer?

[God] is the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing.

Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the earth attracts a stone much rather than the stone seeks the earth.

Great is God our Lord, great is His power and there is no end to His wisdom. Praise Him you heavens, glorify Him, sun and moon and you planets. For out of Him and through Him, and in Him are all things..... We know, oh, so little. To Him be the praise, the honor and the glory from eternity to eternity.

He who will please the crowd and for the sake of the most ephemeral renown will either proclaim those things which nature does not display or even will publish genuine miracles of nature without regard to deeper causes is a spiritually corrupt person... With the best of intentions I publicly speak to the crowd (which is eager for things new) on the subject of what is to come.

I also ask you my friends not to condemn me entirely to the mill of mathematical calculations, and allow me time for philosophical speculations, my only pleasures.

I am a Lutheran astrologer, I throw away the nonsense and keep the hard kernel.

I am much occupied with the investigation of the physical causes [of motions in the Solar System]. My aim in this is to show that the celestial machine is to be likened not to a divine organism but rather to a clockwork ... insofar as nearly all the manifold movements are carried out by means of a single, quite simple magnetic force. This physical conception is to be presented through calculation and geometry.

I am stealing the golden vessels of the Egyptians to build a tabernacle to my God from them, far far away from the boundaries of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice; if you are enraged with me, I shall bear it. See, I cast the die, and I write the book. Whether it is to be read by the people of the present or of the future makes no difference: let it await its reader for a hundred years, if God himself has stood ready for six thousand years for one to study him.

I believe only and alone in the service of Jesus Christ. In him is all refuge and solace.

I believe the geometric proportion served the creator as an idea when He introduced the continuous generation of similar objects from similar objects.

If God himself has waited six thousand years for someone to contemplate his works, my book can wait for a hundred.

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.

If the earth should cease to attract its waters to itself all the waters of the sea would be raised and would flow to the body of the moon.

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.

If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would mount to the moon by a fifty-fourth part of their distance, and the moon fall towards the earth through the other fifty-three parts, and they would there meet, assuming, however, that the substance of both is of the same density.

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.

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.'

I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]

I myself, a professional mathematician, on re-reading my own work find it strains my mental powers to recall to mind from the figures the meanings of the demonstrations, meanings which I myself originally put into the figures and the text from my mind. But when I attempt to remedy the obscurity of the material by putting in extra words, I see myself falling into the opposite fault of becoming chatty in something mathematical.

In theology we must consider the predominance of authority; in philosophy the predominance of reason.

It is a right, yes a duty, to search in cautious manner for the numbers, sizes, and weights, the norms for everything [God] has created. For He himself has let man take part in the knowledge of these things ... For these secrets are not of the kind whose research should be forbidden; rather they are set before our eyes like a mirror so that by examining them we observe to some extent the goodness and wisdom of the Creator.

It may be well to wait a century for a reader, as God has waited six thousand years for an observer.

I used to measure the Heavens, now I measure the shadows of Earth. The mind belonged to Heaven, the body's shadow lies here.

Just as the eye was made to see colours, and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to understand, not whatever you please, but quantity.

My aim is to say that the machinery of the heavens is not like a divine animal but like a clock (and anyone who believes a clock has a soul gives the work the honour due to its maker) and that in it almost all the variety of motions is from one very simple magnetic force acting on bodies, as in the clock all motions are from a very simple weight.

My greatest desire is that I may perceive the God whom I find everywhere in the external world, in like manner also within and inside myself.

Nature loves simplicity and unity.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

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.

Now, as God the maker play'd he taught the game to Nature whom he created in his image; taught her the selfsame game which he played to her.

Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question.