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I can calculate the motions of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people.
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Such a statement first appears in The Church of England Quarterly Review (1850), p. 142, as "[he] could calculate the motions of erratic bodies, but not the madness of a multitude" (claimed to be Newton's view on the outcome of the South Sea Bubble)
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Variants: I can calculate the motions of heavenly bodies but not the madness of men. I can calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men.

 

Isaac Newton

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It is indeed a matter of great difficulty to discover, and effectually to distinguish, the true motions of particular bodies from the apparent; because the parts of that immovable space, in which those motions are performed, do by no means come under the observation of our senses. Yet the thing is not altogether desperate; for we have some arguments to guide us, partly from the apparent motions, which are the differences of the true motions; partly from the forces, which are the causes and effects of the true motions.

 

Isaac Newton

 

The mathematical thermology created by Fourier may tempt us to hope that, as he has estimated the temperature of the space in which we move, me may in time ascertain the mean temperature of the heavenly bodies: but I regard this order of facts as for ever excluded from our recognition. We can never learn their internal constitution, nor, in regard to some of them, how heat is absorbed by their atmosphere. We may therefore define Astronomy as the science by which we discover the laws of the geometrical and mechanical phenomena presented by the heavenly bodies.

 

Auguste Comte

 

But to return to Kepler, his great sagacity, and continual meditation on the planetary motions, suggested to him some views of the true principles from which these motions flow. In his preface to the commentaries concerning the planet Mars, he speaks of gravity as of a power that was mutual betwixt bodies, and tells us that the earth and moon tend towards each other, and would meet in a point so many times nearer to the earth than to the moon, as the earth is greater than the moon, if their motions did not hinder it. He adds that the tides arise from the gravity of the waters towards the moon. But not having just enough notions of the laws of motion, he does not seem to have been able to make the best use of these thoughts; nor does he appear to have adhered to them steadily, since in his epitome of astronomy, published eleven years after, he proposes a physical account of the planetary motions, derived from different principles.

 

Johannes Kepler

 

He used to teach that God is incorporeal, as Plato also asserted, and that his providence extends over all the heavenly bodies.

 

Diogenes Laertius

 

Princes are like heavenly bodies, which cause good or evil times, and which have much veneration but no rest.

 

Francis Bacon