Johannes Kepler

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.

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

Some of what these pamphlets [of astrological forecasts] say will turn out to be true, but most of it time and experience will expose as empty and worthless. The latter part will be forgotten [literally: written on the winds] while the former will be carefully entered in people's memories, as is usual with the crowd.

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

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.

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 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.

My goal is to show that the heavenly machine is not a kind of divine living being but similar to a clockwork insofar as all the manifold motions are taken care of by one single absolutely simple magnetic bodily force, as in a clockwork all motion is taken care of by a simple weight.

Provide ship or sails adapted to the heavenly breezes, and there will be some who will not fear even that void [of space]… . So, for those who will come shortly to attempt this journey, let us establish the astronomy: Galileo, you of Jupiter, I of the Moon.

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

The Earth too wants to have a soul, and the sky wants to rule over it.

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.

Nature uses as little as possible of anything.

The heavenly motions are nothing but a continuous song for several voices, perceived not by the ear but by the intellect.