Johannes Kepler
Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.Collection: Space
The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the heavens so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.Collection: Nature
Nature uses as little as possible of anything.Collection: Nature
Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.Collection: Truth
I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.
I demonstrate by means of philosophy that the earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides; that it is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times.
The squares of the periodic times are to each other as the cubes of the mean distances.
Science is the process of thinking God's thoughts after Him.Collection: Thinking
The chief aim of all investigations of the external world should be to discover the rational order and harmony which has been imposed on it by God and which He revealed to us in the language of mathematics.Collection: Math
The wisdom of the Lord is infinite as are also His glory and His power. Ye heavens, sing His praises; sun, moon, and planets, glorify Him in your ineffable language! Praise Him, celestial harmonies, and all ye who can comprehend them! And thou, my soul, praise thy Creator! It is by Him and in Him that all exist.Collection: Moon
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.'Collection: Heaven
Where there is matter, there is geometry.Collection: Math
Why are things as they are and not otherwise?Collection: Science
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.Collection: God
Nature loves simplicity and unity.Collection: Simplicity
Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.Collection: Book
The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes into the world, unconsciously remembers it, and remains sensitive to the return of configurations of a similar kind.Collection: Baby
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.Collection: Knowledge
Once miracles are admitted, every scientific explanation is out of the question.Collection: Atheist
Without proper experiments I conclude nothing.Collection: Experiments
Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.Collection: World
The heavenly motions... are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, perceived not by the ear but by the intellect, a figured music which sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time.Collection: Song
[God] is the kind Creator who brought forth nature out of nothing.Collection: Kind
Do we ask what profit the little bird hopes for in singing?Collection: Bird
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.Collection: Moon
O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!Collection: Knowledge
When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.Collection: Stars
The heavenly bodies are nothing but a continuous song for several voices (perceived by the intellect, not by the ear); a music which... sets landmarks in the immeasurable flow of time. It is therefore, no longer surprising that man, in imitation of his creator, has at last discovered the art of figured song, which was unknown to the ancients. Man wanted to reproduce the continuity of cosmic time... to obtain a sample test of the delight of the Divine Creator in His works, and to partake of his joy by making music in the imitation of God.Collection: Song
...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.Collection: Law
God gives every animal the means of saving its life-why object if he gives astrology to the astronomer?Collection: Mean
wheresoever the earth may be placed, or whithersoever it may be carried by its animal faculty, heavy bodies will always be carried towards it.Collection: Animal
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.Collection: Miracle
Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use.Collection: Men
The squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the mean distances from the sun.Collection: Distance
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.Collection: Time
[Quantity is the fundamental feature of things,] the 'primarium accidens substantiae,' ...prior to the other categories.Collection: Fundamentals
If two stones were placed... near each other, and beyond the sphere of influence of a third cognate body, these stones, like two magnetic needles, would come together in the intermediate point, each approaching the other by a space proportional to the comparative mass of the other.Collection: Two
Yet in this my stars were not Mercury as morning star in the angle of the seventh house, in quartile with Mars, but they were Copernicus, they were Tycho Brahe, without whose books of observations everything which has now been brought by me into the brightest daylight would lie buried in darkness.Collection: Morning
Repudiating the sensible world, which he neither sees himself nor believes from those who have, the Peripatetic joins combat by childish quibbling in a world on paper, and denies the Sun shines because he himself is blind.Collection: Believe
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.Collection: Moon
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Astrology
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.Collection: Games
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.Collection: Different
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.Collection: Mean
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.Collection: Philosophy
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.Collection: God
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.Collection: Moving