Astronomy Quotes - Page 5

• The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Certain, Reverence

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (1983). “Essays and Lectures”, p.9, Library of America

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• The lessons of science should be experimental also. The sight of a planet through a telescope is worth all the course on astronomy; the shock of the electric spark in the elbow outvalues all theories; the taste of the nitrous oxide, the firing of an artificial volcano, are better than volumes of chemistry.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Science, Volcanoes, Sight

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, David Mikics (2012). “The Annotated Emerson”, p.280, Harvard University Press

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• The outstanding feature, however, is the possibility that the velocity-distance relation may represent the de Sitter effect, and hence that numerical data may be introduced into discussions of the general curvature of space.

  Edwin Powell Hubble

  Distance, Data, Space

  Norriss S. Hetherington, Edwin Powell Hubble (1996). “Hubble's Cosmology: A Guided Study of Selected Texts”

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• Not from the stars do I my judgement pluck, And yet methinks I have astronomy. But not to tell of good or evil luck, Of plagues, of dearths, or season's quality; Nor can I fortune to brief minutes tell ... Or say with princes if it shall go well.

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Science, Evil

  William Shakespeare (2009). “Sonnets and Other Poems”, p.208, Palgrave Macmillan

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• The United States military are preparing weapons which could be used against the aliens, and they could get us into an intergalactic war without us ever having any warning.

  Paul Hellyer

  Military, War, United States

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• And teach me how To name the bigger light, and how the less, That burn by day and night.

  William Shakespeare

  Science, Moon, Night

  William Shakespeare, Kathleen Ermitage (2002). “The Tempest”, p.56, Barron's Educational Series

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• The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs.

  Marcus Tullius Cicero

  Science, Men, Thinking

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• I am just learning to notice the different colors of the stars, and already begin to have a new enjoyment.

  Maria Mitchell

  Stars, Color, Space

  Maria Mitchell (1896). “Maria Mitchell: Life, Letters, and Journals”

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• Astronomy may be revolutionized more than any other field of science by observations from above the atmosphere. Study of the planets, the Sun, the stars, and the rarified matter in space should all be profoundly influenced by measurements from balloons, rockets, probes and satellites. ... In a new adventure of discovery no one can foretell what will be found, and it is probably safe to predict that the most important new discovery that will be made with flying telescopes will be quite unexpected and unforeseen.

  Lyman Spitzer

  Stars, Adventure, Science

  Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 17, No. 5, p. 191, 194, May 1961.

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• The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination. But the combination is locked up in the safe.

  Peter De Vries

  Nature, Science, World

  Peter De Vries (2014). “Let Me Count the Ways: A Novel”, p.192, Open Road Media

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• No one regards what is before his feet; we all gaze at the stars.

  Quintus Ennius

  Stars, Feet, Aviation

  As quoted in "De Divinatione" by Cicero, Book II, Chapter XIII,

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• These earthly godfathers of Heaven's lights, that give a name to every fixed star, have no more profit of their shining nights than those that walk and know not what they are.

  William Shakespeare

  Stars, Science, Night

  William Shakespeare, Joseph Dennie, Samuel Johnson, Isaac Reed, George Steevens (1806). “The Plays of William Shakespeare: With the Corrections and Illustrations of Various Commentators”, p.10

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• Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

  Georg C. Lichtenberg

  Men, Discovery, Understanding

  "Aphorisms". Book by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg. Notebook C 23, 1799.

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• Astronomy is so easy to love. ... Fairly or not, physics is associated with nuclear bombs and nuclear waste, chemistry with pesticides, biology with Frankenfood and designer-gene superbabies. But astronomers are like responsible ecotourists, squinting at the scenery through high-quality optical devices, taking nothing but images that may be computer-enhanced for public distribution, leaving nothing but a few Land Rover footprints on faraway Martian soil, and OK, OK, maybe the Land Rover, too.

  Natalie Angier

  Science, Land, Squinting

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• Physicists and astronomers see their own implications in the world being round, but to me it means that only one-third of the world is asleep at any given time and the other two-thirds is up to something.

  Dean Rusk

  Mean, Science, Two

  Speech to American Bar Association, Atlanta, Ga., 22 Oct. 1964

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• There's some ill planet reigns: I must be patient till the heavens look With an aspect more favourable.

  William Shakespeare

  Astrology, Heaven, Looks

  William Shakespeare, John Pitcher (2010). “The Winter's Tale: Third Series”, p.194, A&C Black

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• God is infinite, so His universe must be too. Thus is the excellence of God magnified and the greatness of His kingdom made manifest; He is glorified not in one, but in countless suns; not in a single earth, a single world, but in a thousand thousand, I say in an infinity of worlds.

  Giordano Bruno

  Greatness, Excellence, World

  "On the Infinite Universe and Worlds". Book by Giordano Bruno, 1584.

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• There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

  Carl Sagan

  Space, Earth Day, Tiny

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.29, Ballantine Books

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• Elen sila lumenn' omentielvo, a star shines on the hour of our meeting.

  J. R. R. Tolkien

  Stars, Shine On, Shining

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• If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living,-then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.

  Johannes Kepler

  Home, Fate, Men

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• This sight... is by far the noblest astronomy affords.

  Edmond Halley

  Sight

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• Love is only one fine star away.

  Stevie Nicks

  Stars, Love Is, Fine

  Song: After The Glitter Fades, Album: Bella Donna

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• The issue, as correctly emphasized by Carl Sagan, is the probability of the evolution of high intelligence and an electronic civilization on an inhabited world. Once we have life (and almost surely it will be very different from life on Earth), what is the probability of its developing a lineage with high intelligence? On Earth, among millions of lineages of organisms and perhaps 50 billion speciation events, only one led to high intelligence; this makes me believe in its utter improbability.

  Ernst Mayr

  Believe, Civilization, Issues

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• Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.

  Galileo Galilei

  Philosophy, Book, Mean

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• System debugging, like astronomy, has always been done chiefly at night.

  Fred Brooks

  Night, Debugging, Done

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