Johannes Kepler Quotes

I much prefer the sharpest criticism of a single intelligent man to the thoughtless approval of the masses.

Science is the process of thinking God's thoughts after Him.

Where there is matter, there is geometry.

Why are things as they are and not otherwise?

Geometry is the archetype of the beauty of the world.

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

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.'

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.

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

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.

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

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

The roads by which men arrive at their insights into celestial matters seem to me almost as worthy of wonder as those matters in themselves.

O telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any sceptre!

The Creator, the fountain of all wisdom, the approver of perpetual order, the eternal and superessential spring of geometry and harmonics.

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.

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.

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

Nature loves simplicity and unity.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

Ships and sails proper for the heavenly air should be fashioned. Then there will also be people, who do not shrink from the dreary vastness of space.

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.

When ships to sail the void between the stars have been built, there will step forth men to sail these ships.

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

Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.

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

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

Wherever there are qualities there are likewise quantities, but not always vice versa.

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

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

Without proper experiments I conclude nothing.

When things are in order, if the cause of the orderliness cannot be deduced from the motion of the elements or from the composition of matter, it is quite possibly a cause possessing a mind.

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.

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 one and eternal shining in the mind of God

[Quantity is the fundamental feature of things,] the 'primarium accidens substantiae,' ...prior to the other categories.

Eyesight should learn from reason.

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

The squares of the periodic times are proportional to the cubes of the mean distances from the sun.

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

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.

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

The radius vector describes equal areas in equal times.

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.

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.

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

So long as the mother, Ignorance, lives, it is not safe for Science the offspring, to divulge the hidden causes of things.

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

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

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