Kepler quotes

Here are a collection of quotations from Johannes Kepler, the founder of modern astronomy (people often say that Copernicus founded modern astronomy, but that’s wrong. Copernicus only changed a detail, whereas Kepler changed a whole paradigm. He was the first to say that the motions of planets are governed by principles we would recognise as physical forces, bound by physical, mathematical laws).

Kepler wrote in seventeenth century German; these English translations are all from The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler.

• “Having percieved the first glimmer of dawn eighteen months ago, the light of day three months ago, but only a few days ago the plain sun of a most wonderful vision - nothing shall now hold me back. Yes, I give myself up to holy raving. I mockingly defy all mortals with this open confession : I have robbed the golden vessels of the Egyptians to make out of them a tabernacle for my God, far from the frontiers of Egypt. If you forgive me, I shall rejoice. If you are angry, I shall bear it. Behold, I have cast the dice, and I am writing a book either for my contemporaries, or for posterity. It is all the same to me. It may wait a hundred years for a reader, since God has also waited six thousand years for a witness.”