Nicole Oresme quotes

Nicole Oresme was a French philosopher, mathematician, and bishop, renowned for his pioneering work in science and economics during the Middle Ages. His contributions included early ideas about the rotation of the Earth and the use of graphs in mathematics. He influenced later thinkers and played a key role in the development of Western scientific thought. Here are 7 of his quotes:

I am of the opinion that the main and final cause why the prince pretends to the power of altering the coinage is the profit or gain which he can get from it.

Nicole Oresme

The heavenly bodies move with such regularity, orderliness, and symmetry that it is truly a marvel; and they continue always to act in this manner ceaselessly, following the established system, without increasing or reducing speed and continuing without respite, as the Scripture says: Summer and winter, night and day they never rest.

Nicole Oresme

Since money belongs to the community ... it would seem that the community may control it as it wills, and therefore may make as much profit from alteration as it likes, and treat money as its own property.

Nicole Oresme

People marvel at ... things only because they rarely happen; but the causes for these are as apparent as for others ... For example, at night a fearful man who sees a wolf in the fields, or a cat in his room, will immediately assert and judge that it is an enemy or a devil ... because he fixes his imagination on these and fears them. And a person devout and rapt [in ecstasy] will judge that it is an angel ... A vigorous imagining of a retained species, then, together with a small external appearance or with an imbalance of some internal disposition ... produces marvelous appearances in healthy as well as in sick people.

Nicole Oresme

Whenever kingship approaches tyranny it is near its end, for by this it becomes ripe for division, change of dynasty, or total destruction, especially in a temperate climate ... where men are habitually, morally and naturally free.

Nicole Oresme

God in His infinite grandeur without any quantity and absolutely indivisible, which we call immensity, is necessarily all in every extension or space or place which exists or can be imagined.

Nicole Oresme