Astronomers Quotes - Page 2

• Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

  Plato

  Philosophical, Science, Soul

  Plato, Julius A. Sigler (1997). “Education: Ends and Means”, p.27, University Press of America

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• It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes should one day throw light on the origin of mountains, as it must to the first astronomers, that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon.

  Charles Lyell

  Fall, Science, Moon

  Charles Lyell (1833). “Principles of Geology: Being an Attempt to Explain the Former Changes of the Earth's Surface by Reference to Causes Now in Operation”, p.5

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• Just as the spectroscope opened up a new astronomy by enabling the astronomer to determine some of the constituents of which distant stars are composed, so the seismograph, recording the unfelt motion of distant earthquakes, enables us to see into the earth and determine its nature with as great a certainty, up to a certain point, as if we could drive a tunnel through it and take samples of the matter passed through.

  Richard Dixon Oldham

  Nature, Stars, Science

  "Geophysical Framework of India, Bangladesh and Pakistan" by M. N. Qureshy, CRC Press, (p. 150), 2005.

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• If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

  Carl Sagan

  Inspirational, Nature, Hipster

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Cosmos”, p.242, Ballantine Books

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• Astronomers have discovered a planet that is twice the size of earth and made of diamonds. President Obama says the planet may be inhabited by aliens not paying their fair share.

  Jay Leno

  President, Size, Earth

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• I sometimes think that the universe is a machine designed for the perpetual astonishment of astronomers.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Thinking, Machines, Astonishment

  "Mysterious World (Strange Skies)". TV Series, November 18, 1980.

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• Since we astronomers are priests of the highest God in regard to the book of nature, it befits us to be thoughtful, not of the glory of our minds, but rather, above all else, of the glory of God.

  Johannes Kepler

  Book, Thoughtful, Mind

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• I call God ECCO (Earth Coincidence Control Office) . It's much more satisfying to call it that. A lot of people accept this and they don't know that they're just talking about God. I finally found a God that was big enough. As the astronomer said to the Minister, My God's astronomical. The Minister said, How can you relate to something so big? The astronomer said, Well, that isn't the problem, your God's too small!

  John C. Lilly

  Talking, Office, People

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• Few sights in science are sadder than astronomers standing in the rain.

  Dennis Overbye

  Rain, Sight, Standing

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• The Apollo pictures of the whole Earth conveyed to multitudes something well known to astronomers: On the scale of the worlds - to say nothing of stars or galaxies - humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Rocks, Apollo

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.25, Ballantine Books

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• Astronomers have a common ground for discussion with musicians in the harmony of the stars and musical concords in tetrads and triads of the fourth and the fifth, and with geometricians in the subject of vision; and in all other sciences many points, perhaps all, are common so far as the discussion of them is concerned. But the actual undertaking of works which are brought to perfection by the hand and its manipulation is the function of those who have been specially trained to deal with a single art.

  Marcus Vitruvius Pollio

  Art, Stars, Hands

  "De architectura". Book by Vitruvius. Book I, Chapter I, Section 16,

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• Picture yourself during the early 1920's inside the dome of the Mount Wilson Observatory. ... Humason is showing Shapley stars he had found in the Andromeda Nebula that appeared and disappeared on photographs of that object. The famous astronomer very patiently explains that these objects could not be stars because the Nebula was a nearby gaseous cloud within our own Milky Way system. Shapley takes his handkerchief from his pocket and wipes the identifying marks off the back of the photographic plate.

  Halton Arp

  Stars, Science, Clouds

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• I do not see how astronomers can help feeling exquisitely insignificant, for every new page of the Book of the Heavens they open reveals to them more and more that the world we are so proud of is to the universe of careening globes as is one mosquito to the winged and hoofed flocks and herds that darken the air and populate the plains and forests of all the earth. If you killed the mosquito would it be missed? Verily, What is Man, that he should be considered of God?

  Mark Twain

  Book, Men, Air

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• God gives every animal the means of saving its life-why object if he gives astrology to the astronomer?

  Johannes Kepler

  Mean, Animal, Astrology

  "The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science". Book by Edwin Arthur Burtt, 1925.

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• Said about Napier's logarithms: . . . by shortening the labors doubled the life of the astronomer.

  Pierre-Simon Laplace

  Life, Said, Labor

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• There is nothing as dreamy and poetic, nothing as radical, subversive, and psychedelic, as mathematics. It is every bit as mind blowing as cosmology or physics (mathematicians conceived of black holes long before astronomers actually found any), and allows more freedom of expression than poetry, art, or music (which depends heavily on properties of the physical universe). Mathematics is the purest of the arts, as well as the most misunderstood.

  Paul Lockhart

  Art, Expression, Long

  "A Mathematician’s Lament". genius.com. January 1, 2002.

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• Forty years as an astronomer have not quelled my enthusiasm for lying outside after dark, staring up at the stars. It isn't only the beauty of the night sky that thrills me. It's the sense I have that some of those points of light are the home stars of beings not so different from us, daily cares and all, who look across space with wonder, just as we do.

  Frank Drake

  Stars, Lying, Home

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• Evidence in support of general relativity came quickly. Astronomers had long known that Mercury’s orbital motion around the sun deviated slightly from what Newton’s mathematics predicted. In 1915, Einstein used his new equations to recalculate Mercury’s trajectory and was able to explain the discrepancy, a realization he later described to his colleague Adrian Fokker as so thrilling that for some hours it gave him heart palpitations.

  Brian Greene

  Heart, Long, Support

  Brian Greene (2011). “The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos”, p.16, Vintage

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• An astronomer must be cosmopolitan, because ignorant statesmen cannot be expected to value their services

  Tycho Brahe

  Ignorant, Expected, Statesmen

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• Any astronomer can predict with absolute accuracy just where every star in the universe will be at 11.30 tonight. He can make no such prediction about his teenage daughter.

  James Truslow Adams

  Mother Daughter, Stars, Teenage

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• The astronomers said, 'Give us matter and a little motion and we will construct the universe. It is not enough that we should have matter, we must also have a single impulse, one shove to launch the mass and generate the harmony of the centrifugal and centripetal forces.' ... There is no end to the consequences of the act. That famous aboriginal push propagates itself through all the balls of the system, and through every atom of every ball.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Should Have, Giving

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson (Illustrated)”, p.1491, Delphi Classics

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• What is the ultimate solution to the origin of the Universe? The answers provided by the astronomers are disconcerting and remarkable. Most remarkable of all is the fact that in science, as in the Bible, the world begins with an act of creation.

  Robert Jastrow

  Atheism, Answers, World

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• I cannot agree with any astronomer who insists that all of these things are mirages, planets, clouds, or illusions. The majority of the people are articulate enough to tell their stories and sincere enough to make depositions before notaries public. Even scientists concede that these folk saw something.

  Morris K. Jessup

  Clouds, People, Majority

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• So we down-to-earth, gutsy, tough, realistic, and practical types have just been squandering billions of dollars and unimaginable amounts of energy, nerve-work, and materials in whizzing off to the moon to discover, as astronomers knew before, that it was just a dreary slag heap. This is the true, original and scientifically etymological meaning of being lunatics. Crying for the moon.

  Alan Watts

  Sunset, Moon, Night

  Alan W. Watts (2011). “Cloud-hidden, Whereabouts Unknown: A Mountain Journal”, p.116, Vintage

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• The Astronomer's Drinking Song Astronomers! What can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus.

  Augustus De Morgan

  Song, Drinking, Astronomy

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