Johannes Kepler

Why are things as they are and not otherwise?

— Johannes Kepler

If the moon and earth were not retained in their orbits by their animal force or some other equivalent, the earth would…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own…

— Johannes Kepler

Just as the eye was made to see colours, and the ear to hear sounds, so the human mind was made to…

— Johannes Kepler

I had the intention of becoming a theologian...but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

Repudiating the sensible world, which he neither sees himself nor believes from those who have, the Peripatetic joins combat by childish quibbling…

— Johannes Kepler

If the earth were not round, heavy bodies would not tend from every side in a straight line towards the center of…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

Where there is matter, there is geometry.

— Johannes Kepler

The soul of the newly born baby is marked for life by the pattern of the stars at the moment it comes…

— Johannes Kepler

So, Fabricius, I already have this: that the most true path of the planet [Mars] is an ellipse, which Dürer also calls…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

Gravity is a mutual affection between cognate bodies towards union or conjunction (similar in kind to the magnetic virtue), so that the…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking on the moon…

— Johannes Kepler

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

— Johannes Kepler

“We do not ask for what useful purpose the birds do sing, for song is their pleasure since they were created for…

— Johannes Kepler

Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.

— Johannes Kepler

My aim is to say that the machinery of the heavens is not like a divine animal but like a clock (and…

— Johannes Kepler

Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful,…

— Johannes Kepler

O telescope, instrument of knowledge, more precious than any sceptre.

— Johannes Kepler