The Earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides, is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.
Interpretation
This quote emphasizes the smallness of Earth in the vast universe and highlights the idea of our planet being part of a larger cosmic system.
Johannes Kepler's quote illustrates the concept of Earth's roundness and its infinitesimal size compared to the universe. It serves as a reminder of our planet's place within the grand expanse of the cosmos, suggesting that we are one small part of a much larger and magnificent reality that extends beyond our immediate perception.
In practice
In a lecture about astronomy, you might quote Kepler to underscore how we should appreciate our planet's place in the universe.
...Those laws are within the grasp of the human mind. God wanted us to recognize them by creating us after his own image so that we could share in his own thoughts... and if piety allow us to say so, our understanding is in this respect of the same kind as the divine, at least as far as we are able to grasp something of it in our mortal life.
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.
We find, therefore, under this orderly arrangement, a wonderful symmetry in the universe, and a definite relation of harmony in the motion and magnitude of the orbs, of a kind that is not possible to obtain in any other way.
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. 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.
Eyesight should learn from reason.
I measured the skies, now the shadows I measure, Sky-bound was the mind, earth-bound the body rests. [Kepler's epitaph]
Weapons of mass destruction violate more than individual lives - they cross international borders and jeopardize all people. They also drain resources that could be used instead for medicines, schools and other life-saving supplies. We must come together with even greater determination to prevent a WMD nightmare.
For me, arguably the story of telomeres and telomerase began thousands of years ago, in the cornfields of the Maya highlands of Central America.
Every great advance in natural knowledge has involved the absolute rejection of authority.
Ninety-nine percent of all species that ever lived are now extinct.
In just one year, the expenditure of of the U.S.'s military budget is equivalent to the entire 50-year running budget of NASA combined.
If such a thing had happened once, it must surely have happened many times in this galaxy of a hundred billion suns.
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