Christiaan Huygens

What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe!

How must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?

Christiaan Huygens (14 April 1629 – 8 July 1695) was a Dutch astronomer.

Sourced

• Since 'tis certain that Earth and Jupiter have their Water and Clouds, there is no reason why the other Planets should be without them. I can't say that they are exactly of the same nature with our Water; but that they should be liquid their use requires, as their beauty does that they be clear. This Water of ours, in Jupiter or Saturn, would be frozen up instantly by reason of the vast distance of the Sun. Every Planet therefore must have its own Waters of such a temper not liable to Frost.
  • Christiaan Huygens (1695). Cosmotheoros, Book I. p. 27. 

• What a wonderful and amazing Scheme have we here of the magnificent Vastness of the Universe! So many Suns, so many Earths, and every one of them stock’d with so many Herbs, Trees and Animals, and adorn’d with so many Seas and Mountains! And how must our wonder and admiration be encreased when we consider the prodigious distance and multitude of the Stars?
  • Christiaan Huygens (1695). Cosmotheoros, Book II. p. 150-151. 

• One finds in this subject a kind of demonstration which does not carry with it so high a degree of certainty as that employed in geometry; and which differs distinctly from the method employed by geometers in that they prove their propositions by well-established and incontrovertible principles, while here principles are tested by inferences which are derivable from them. The nature of the subject permits of no other treatment. It is possible, however, in this way to establish a probability which is little short of certainty. This is the case when the consequences of the assumed principles are in perfect accord with the observed phenomena, and especially when these verifications are numerous; but above all when one employs the hypothesis to predict new phenomena and finds his expectations realized.
  • Christiaan Huygens (1690) Treatise on Light - preface, Translated by Michael R. Matthews, Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy. 1989. p.126

Disputed

• The world is my country, to promote science is my religion.
  • The earliest citation of this remark yet found is in Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (Episode 6) from 1980, where it is phrased The world is my country, science my religion.
  • Also in The Making of Modern Europe, 1648-1780 (1985) by Geoffrey Treasure, p. 474, it is declared that this was Huygens' "motto" — but this seems very similar to the much more famous and long attested declaration of Thomas Paine in Rights of Man (1791): "My country is the world, and my religion is to do good" which has long been paraphrased "The world is my country, and to do good is my religion."