Gerardus Mercator quotes

Gerardus Mercator was a Flemish geographer and cartographer, renowned for creating the Mercator projection map. His work greatly advanced navigation and geography during the Age of Exploration. He is still celebrated today for his influential contributions to mapmaking and geographic science. Here are 3 of his quotes:

... spread on a plane the surface of a sphere in such a way that the positions of all places shall correspond on all sides with each other both in so far as true direction and distance are concerned and as concerns true longitudes and latitudes. (Gerardus Mercator)
When I saw that Moses' version of the Genesis of the world did not fit sufficiently in many ways with Aristotle and the rest of the philosophers, I began to have doubts about the truth of all philosophers and started to investigate the secrets of nature. View quote
Gerardus Mercator
Since my youth geography has been for me the primary object of study. When I was engaged in it, having applied the considerations of the natural and geometric sciences, I liked, little by little, not only the description of the earth, but also the structure of the whole machinery of the world, whose numerous elements are not known by anyone to date. View quote
Gerardus Mercator