Johannes Kepler Quotes

Advertencia para idiotas. Pero a todo aquel que sea demasiado estúpido para comprender la ciencia astronómica, o demasiado pusilánime para creer a Copérnico sin que afecte a su fe, le aconsejaría que, una vez renunciado a los estudios astronómicos, y tras haber condenado todos aquellos estudios filosóficos que le plazca, se preocupe de sus asuntos y se vaya a su casa a escarbar su terruño

Nu ne întrebăm în ce scop util cântă păsările, cântecul este bucuria lor de când au fost zămislite pentru cântat. La fel, n-ar trebui să ne întrebăm de ce spiritul omului se străduieşte să pătrundă secretele cerurilor. Diversitatea fenomenelor naturii e atât de mare, iar comorile ascunse în ceruri atât de bogate, tocmai pentru ca spiritul omului să nu fie nicicând lipsit de hrană proaspătă.

I believe it was an act of Divine Providence that I arrived just at the time when Longomontanus [<nowiki/>Tycho Brahe's assistant before Kepler] was occupied with Mars. For Mars alone enables us to penetrate the secrets of astronomy which otherwise would remain forever hidden from us.

The laws of nature are but the mathematical thoughts of God.

If you want the exact moment in time, it was conceived mentally on 8th March in this year one thousand six hundred and eighteen, but submitted to calculation in an unlucky way, and therefore rejected as false, and finally returning on the 15th of May and adopting a new line of attack, stormed the darkness of my mind. So strong was the support from the combination of my labour of seventeen years on the observations of Brahe and the present study, which conspired together, that at first I believed I was dreaming, and assuming my conclusion among my basic premises. But it is absolutely certain and exact that "the proportion between the periodic times of any two planets is precisely the sesquialterate proportion of their mean distances..."

When the storm rages and the shipwreck of the state threatens, we can do nothing more worthy than to sink the anchor of our peaceful studies into the ground of eternity.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

Temporis filia veritas; cui me obstetricari non pudet.

Truth is the daughter of time, and I feel no shame in being her midwife.

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.

The orbit of every planet is an ellipse with the sun at one of the two foci.

The harnessing to a rational pursuit of the immense psychic energies derived from an irrational obsession seems to be another secret of genius, at least of genius of a certain type.

The Earth sings Mi-Fa-Mi, so we can gather ever from this that Misery and Famine reign in our habitat.

Since geometry is co-eternal with the divine mind before the birth of things, God himself served as his own model in creating the world (for what is there in God which is not God?), and he with his own image reached down to humanity.

I was almost driven to madness in considering and calculating this matter. I could not find out why the planet would rather go on an elliptical orbit. Oh, ridiculous me! As the liberation in the diameter could not also be the way to the ellipse. So this notion brought me up short, that the ellipse exists because of the liberation. With reasoning derived from physical principles, agreeing with experience, there is no figure left for the orbit of the planet but a perfect ellipse.

We ought not to ask why the human mind troubles to fathom the secrets of the universe. The diversity of the phenomena of nature is so great, and the treasures hidden in the skies so rich, precisely in order that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment.