Sceptical Quotes about Astrology

We offered you, HERE, ten quotes by people who believed in astrology, from the ancient Greek physician Hippocrates, Father of Western Medicine, to Nancy Reagan, First Lady of the United States of America.









Now, we offer you ten sceptical quotes about astrology: among the authors, you’ll discover philosophers, mathematicians and writers.

Astrology provides a brilliant proof of the miserable subjectivity of human beings, as a result of which they relate everything to themselves and go from every thought in a straight line immediately back to themselves. It relates the course of the great celestial bodies to the pathetic I, as it also connects the comets in the sky with earthly quarrels and shabby tricks.

(Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher, author of The World as Will and Representation.

If one were to bring ten of the wisest men in the world together and ask them what was the most stupid thing in existence, they would not be able to discover anything so stupid as astrology.

(David Hilbert, 1862-1943, German mathematician, who discovered and developed invariant theory, the axiomatization of geometry and the theory of Hilbert spaces)

After a duration of a thousand years, the power of astrology broke down when, with Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo, the progress of astronomy overthrew the false hypothesis upon which the entire structure rested, namely the geocentric system of the universe. The fact that the earth revolves in space intervened to upset the complicated play of planetary influences, and the silent stars, related to the unfathomable depths of the sky, no longer made their prophetic voices audible to mankind. Celestial mechanics and spectrum analysis finally robbed them of their mysterious prestige.

(Franz Cumont, 1868-1947, Belgian archaeologist and historian, author of Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans)

I don’t believe in astrology. The only stars I can blame for my failures are those that walk about the stage.

(Noel Coward, 1899-1973, English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer)









About astrology and palmistry: they are good because they make people vivid and full of possibilities. They are communism at its best. Everybody has a birthday and almost everybody has a palm.

(Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007), American writer, author of Slaughterhouse-Five, Cat’s Cradle, Breakfast of Champions)

We should take astrology seriously. No, I don’t mean we should believe in it. I am talking about fighting it seriously instead of humouring it as a piece of harmless fun.

(Richard Dawkins, born 1941, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and writer, author of The Blind Watchmaker)

Astrology is an aesthetic affront. It cheapens astronomy, like using Beethoven for commercial jingles.

(Richard Dawkins, born 1941, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and writer, author of The Blind Watchmaker)

Whether the ice caps melt, or expand – whatever happens – the anthropogenic global warming theorists claim it confirms their theory. A perfect example of a pseudo-science like astrology.

(Frank Tipler, born 1947, American mathematical physicist and cosmologist, author of books about the Omega Point, based on Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s religious ideas)

All a man can see while looking at the sky are cosmic fossils of thousands and millions of years ago. The only thing an astrologer can predict, is the past.

(Jostein Gaarder, born 1952, Norwegian writer, author of Sophie’s World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy)

My astrologer predicted a year of successful enterprise and good fortune. So what went wrong? Had there been some ghastly beaureaucratic astral mix up?

(Tyne O’Connell, born 1960, British author of short stories)







