100 Quotes About Astronomy

The universe is full of wonder, but you don’t need to be an astrophysicist to see it. You can feel the magic of the universe in every moment, and find inspiration in the wisdom of a great astronomer. These quotes about astronomy will help you see the starry sky from a whole new perspective.

1
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements - the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life - weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. . Lawrence M. Krauss
2
The knowledge that the atoms that comprise life on earth - the atoms that make up the human body, are traceable to the crucibles that cooked light elements into heavy elements in their core under extreme temperatures and pressures. These stars- the high mass ones among them- went unstable in their later years- they collapsed and then exploded- scattering their enriched guts across the galaxy- guts made of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and all the fundamental ingredients of life itself. These ingredients become part of gas clouds that condense, collapse, form the next generation of solar systems- stars with orbiting planets. And those planets now have the ingredients for life itself. So that when I look up at the night sky, and I know that yes we are part of this universe, we are in this universe, but perhaps more important than both of those facts is that the universe is in us. When I reflect on that fact, I look up- many people feel small, cause their small and the universe is big. But I feel big because my atoms came from those stars. . Neil Degrasse Tyson
3
And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light-years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something. Mark Haddon
4
Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar, " every "supreme leader, " every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam. Carl Sagan
5
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject.. And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.. Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced. Seneca
6
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience. C.s. Lewis
Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis.
7
Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis. PierreSimon Laplace
People say- 'NASA lies.' I say- 'the moon knows it...
8
People say- 'NASA lies.' I say- 'the moon knows it all. Look at the moon and forget the spinning flat world. Munia Khan
9
I have realized; it is during the times I am far outside my element that I experience myself the most. That I see and feel who I really am, the most! I think that's what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it's only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing "tail" behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they're shooting stars! That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me! I discover a smile I didn't know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn't know existed in me.. I see myself. I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back. C. Joybell C.
The discovery of a new dish does more for the...
10
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. Jean Anthelme BrillatSavarin
11
My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. H.G. Wells
Love is only one fine star away.
12
Love is only one fine star away. Stevie Nicks
13
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Ralph Waldo Emerson
By looking far out into space we are also looking...
14
By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang. Carl Sagan
Our image is here and will for ever stay, and...
15
Our image is here and will for ever stay, and there is comfort in knowing that the memory of our lives will always be there, traveling among the stars. Christophe Galfard
16
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
Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than...
17
Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned. Giordano Bruno
18
The reappearance of the crescent moon after the new moon; the return of the Sun after a total eclipse, the rising of the Sun in the morning after its troublesome absence at night were noted by people around the world; these phenomena spoke to our ancestors of the possibility of surviving death. Up there in the skies was also a metaphor of immortality. Carl Sagan
Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised...
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Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use. Johannes Kepler
It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual...
20
It's amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time. Alex Filippenko
21
The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky. Anaximander
22
At the very moment that humans discovered the scale of the universe and found that their most unconstrained fancies were in fact dwarfed by the true dimensions of even the Milky Way Galaxy, they took steps that ensured that their descendants would be unable to see the stars at all. For a million years humans had grown up with a personal daily knowledge of the vault of heaven. In the last few thousand years they began building and emigrating to the cities. In the last few decades, a major fraction of the human population has abandoned a rustic way of life. As technology developed and the cities were polluted, the nights became starless. New generations grew to maturity wholly ignorant of the sky that had transfixed their ancestors and that had stimulated the modern age of science and technology. Without even noticing, just as astronomy entered a golden age most people cut themselves off from the sky, a cosmic isolationism that ended only with the dawn of space exploration. . Carl Sagan
23
You would hardly think, at first, that horrid monsters lie up there waiting to be discovered by any moderately penetrating mind--monsters to which those of the oceans bear no sort of comparison." What monsters may they be?" Impersonal monsters, namely, Immensities. Until a person has thought out the stars and their inter-spaces, he has hardly learnt that there are things much more terrible than monsters of shape, namely, monsters of magnitude without known shape. Such monsters are the voids and waste places of the sky.. In these our sight plunges quite beyond any twinkler we have yet visited. Those deep wells for the human mind to let itself down into, leave alone the human body! and think of the side caverns and secondary abysses to right and left as you pass on! .. There is a size at which dignity begins, " he exclaimed; "further on there is a size at which grandeur begins; further on there is a size at which solemnity begins; further on, a size at which awfulness begins; further on, a size at which ghastliness begins. That size faintly approaches the size of the stellar universe. So am I not right in saying that those minds who exert their imaginative powers to bury themselves in the depths of that universe merely strain their faculties to gain a new horror? . Thomas Hardy
The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander...
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The bright sun was extinguish'd, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space. George Gordon Byron
25
The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day. Carl Sagan
26
There's no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don't think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that... points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos. Unknown
27
The near side of a galaxy is tens of thousands of light-years closer to us than the far side; thus we see the front as it was tens of thousands of years before the back. But typical events in galactic dynamics occupy tens of millions of years, so the error in thinking of an image of a galaxy as frozen in one moment of time is small. Carl Sagan
Some piously record 'In the beginning God', but I say...
28
Some piously record 'In the beginning God', but I say 'In the beginning hydrogen'. Harlow Shapley
When we look up at night and view the stars,...
29
When we look up at night and view the stars, everything we see is shinning because of distant nuclear fusion. Carl Sagan
The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every...
30
The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same. Steven Erikson
31
Then they wondered if there were men in the stars. Why not? And as creation is harmonious, the inhabitants of Sirius ought to be huge, those of Mars middle-sized, those of Venus very small. Unless it is the same everywhere. There are businessmen, police up there; people trade, fight, dethrone their kings. Some shooting stars suddenly slid past, describing a course in the sky like the parabola of a monstrous rocket. ‘ My Word, ’ said Bouvard, ‘look at those worlds disappearing.’ Pecuchet replied: ‘If our world in its turn danced about, the citizens of the stars would be no more impressed than we are now. Ideas like that are rather humbling.’ ‘ What is the point of it all?’ ‘ Perhaps there isn’t a point.’ ‘ Yet…’ and Pecuchet repeated the word two or three times, without finding anything more to say. Gustave Flaubert
One can only wonder what the motivation is for Mauna...
32
One can only wonder what the motivation is for Mauna Kea astronomers to subject their nighttime support staff to extremely long and fatiguing night shifts when they are easily avoidable. Steven Magee
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When I look at the night sky, I'm overwhelmed by the enormity of the universe. But this doesn't make me question my significance in God's eyes, no. Instead, it makes me drop to my knees in awe of God. If God created all of this, how powerful must He be to be able to manage and sustain all of it? God has to have enormous power to manage the entire cosmos. How mighty must He be to hold this massive universe in the palm of His hand? . Evan Minton
The Universe was opaque until 380.000 years after the Big...
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The Universe was opaque until 380.000 years after the Big Bang. Neil Degrasse Tyson
We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the...
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We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out–and we have only just begun. Neil Degrasse Tyson
People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither...
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People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe. Neil Degrasse Tyson
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Let's see if I got this right, " she would say to herself. "I've taken an inert gas that's in the air, made it into a liquid, put some impurities in a ruby, attached a magnet, and detected the fires of creation. Carl Sagan
Until a thing was seen, could it be said to...
38
Until a thing was seen, could it be said to exist? And if his eye through the telescope were the one that brought a certain star into existence, did not that make him a creator? Kate Grenville
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N every culture, the sky and the religious impulse are intertwined. I lie back in an open field and the sky surrounds me. I’m overpowered by its scale. It’s so vast and so far away that my own insignificance becomes palpable. But I don’t feel rejected by the sky. I’m a part of it - tiny, to be sure, but everything is tiny compared to that overwhelming immensity. And when I concentrate in the stars, the planets, and their motions, I have an irresistible sense of machinery, clockwork, elegant precision working on a scale that, however lofty out aspirations, dwarfs and humbles us. . Carl Sagan
40
This had not endeared him to exobiologists such as Dr Perera, who took exactly the opposite view. To them, the only purpose of the Universe was the production of intelligence, and they were apt to talk sneeringly about purely astronomical phenomena, 'Mere dead matter' was one of their favourite phrases. Arthur C. Clarke
41
We have yet to encounter an observable astronomical phenomenon that require a supernatural element to be added to a model in order to describe the even... Observations in cosmology look just as they can be expected to look if there is no God. Victor J. Stenger
42
I don't think she can see her husband very often, for he teaches the university students during the day, and works at the telescope at night. I wonder if she hopes for cloudy nights and then feels guilty. Pippa Goldschmidt
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It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known. Carl Sagan
44
I study Astronomy because it is the loftiest form of science available. It is the highest possible reaches that we can go to with knowledge and understanding. Every day, we get to look into infinity, into the everlasting, into time, space, space-time and into both the past and the future. Every day, we redefine what exists; we dance on the borders of reality and the unreal. I hardly even dare say the word, “unreal.” We have yet to prove that word. C. Joybell C.
45
The quiet brings to mind the multitude of men and women living out their days in solitude–each convinced that their fears and wants are unique to themselves–and she longs to press herself into their fold and be counted among those whose lives are meshed with the turning of the world. John Pipkin
46
Here the sky is wrapped in silk. The breathings of so many men and animals, and the smoke of your coal, and the fog, oh, it is too much. The Paris sky is perfect. A man must see clearly, to see something new. John Pipkin
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Sometimes he counts himself to sleep by imagining the miles between stars like the succession of footsteps cleaving him from his home, as if mastering the distance in thought might blunt the separation. But if a man cannot return to the place of his birth, then what is there to stay his restless feet? What center will hold him from wandering endlessly? It should not be so difficult, he thinks, to know one’s place in the order of things. John Pipkin
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The same ratios that govern music give laws to optics and to the movement of the heavens as well. Simple. Elegant. Predictable. John Pipkin
49
...but at night when he turns the awkward [telescope] skyward, he catches his breath at the clarity of the image and the vast populations of stars unknown to him until then, the riotous glittering in the dark crevices between constellations, a convocation of bright spirits waiting to be found. John Pipkin
50
Sketches of mad skies spilling stars caught in spiraling gyres, diagrams for constructing sextants tall as a man and armillary spheres to mimic the motion of the cosmos. He decides that he must have all of it, that he will cram the little observatory with maps and charts, clocks and compasses, and instruments for bringing the sky nearer. John Pipkin
51
As the eclipse progresses, a confusion of chattering birds sweeps low in search of dusk and their shadows skip over the water’s surface and it makes perfect sense that these small creatures should be so moved by events beyond their reckoning. John Pipkin
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So we will cover every possibility. We will take turns at the telescope. I will keep watch in the day, and at night you will take my place, and together we will see to it that no part of the sky goes unobserved. John Pipkin
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He tracks the rise and fall of the glittering darkness thronged with specks and tendrils of luminous secrets. Falling stars crackle in the cold air and prickle his skin. They flash in the corner of his vision where the eye’s discernment of light and shadow is most acute. John Pipkin
54
What has been his cause for searching the heavens day and night, for testing the limit of his reach hour by hour like a man trapped inside an expanding balloon? The reasons were as various as the days they consumed: to grasp the workings of the universe, to find something more beyond earth's fretful compass, to put his name to a discovery and secure fame's immortality, to be able to point to a map and proclaim simply: here I am. John Pipkin
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Her calculations have always held the utmost accuracy, but mathematics alone will not be enough to guide her; she must learn to trust in chance and, if need be, in accident. John Pipkin
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What has been his cause for searching the heavens day and night, for testing the limit of his reach hour by hour like a man trapped inside an expanding balloon? The reasons were as various as the days they consumed: to grasp the workings of the universe, to find something more beyond earth’s fretful compass, to put his name to a discovery and secure fame’s immortality, to be able to point to a map and proclaim simply: here I am. John Pipkin
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Each new scientific fact gives rise to new uncertainties, and every pattern of starlight holds both a record and a prophecy. John Pipkin
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The heavens are too immense, too beautiful and varied, to fit into the mind of any one deity; the murmured creeds of fathers and sons are no match for the astronomer’s gasp. John Pipkin
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Nothing in heaven or earth is content to be alone, and so there must always be something more. The universe is governed by a principle no more complicated than this: that a solitary body will forever attract another to itself. John Pipkin
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It is one of the great blessings of youth, this guiltlessness, the source of gentle sleep and peaceful days. John Pipkin
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Wisdom tolerates blustered opinions, the better to dismiss them later with discovery. John Pipkin
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It is only the sudden and unpredictable appearance of comets that spoils the immutable celestial sphere. John Pipkin
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Is this not the very thing that drives an adventurous man to navigate uncharted oceans, to traverse continents and mountains, to pilot virgin estuaries and hidden coves–this promise of inscribing a name steadfast upon what he finds? There are few parcels of earth left to be claimed; yet even as the known world shrinks, the heavens grow ever more infinite. An explorer of the skies need never leave his home or fret over the swiftness of other expeditions; he might give whatever name he chooses to any new thing that wanders into his view. John Pipkin
64
But if watching the sky is to be his duty, how should he begin? Now and then he has spotted one of the five bright planets or recognized a constellation, but he knows little about the turning of the heavens. When he contemplates the great distances between this and that, and the vast multitude of solitary objects spread over the celestial dome, he cannot fathom how one goes about searching for what is yet unknown. John Pipkin
65
In the library of the observatory in Ondrejov, above Prague, I once found a catalogue of stars that astounded me. It had hundreds of pages with tables of stars that had been observed and confirmed to exist. Towards the end there was a table of stars thought to have been observed but confirmed to not exist. But to my astonishment, at the back of the volume I found a list of stars which had never been observed and did not exist. Perhaps the most amazing thing about the universe is that we could create an infinite catalogue of things, worlds and beings that no one has seen and which do not exist. Each story in the realm of fiction is a small part of that catalogue. Peter Nilson
66
The only way to go back in time is by moving into the future Waqas Bin Ehsan
67
The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage. Friedrich Nietzsche
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What has been done is little–scarcely a beginning; yet it is much in comparison with the total blank of a century past. And our knowledge will, we are easily persuaded, appear in turn the merest ignorance to those who come after us. Agnes Mary Clerke
69
[Giordano] Bruno died, despised and suffering, after eight years of agony. From that moment, his works have attracted interest, and he has long been recognized as an important figure in the development of modern thought. Nevertheless, few are familiar with the many and often bewildering pages of his writings. His Italian works have their place in the history of Italian literature. The Latin works in prose and verse are much more bulky and diffuse, but the few who grapple with them are rewarded by passages of great beauty and eloquence. Dorothea Singer
70
I thought to myself: if it’s true that every person has a star in the sky, mine must be distant, dim, and absurd. Perhaps I never had a star. Sadegh Hedayat
71
There are even some stars so remote that their light will reach the Earth only when Earth itself is a dead planet, as they themselves are dead, so that the living Earth will never be visited by that forlorn ray of light, without a living source, without a living destination. Often on fine nights when the park of this establishment is vacant, I amuse myself with this marvelous instrument (telescope). I go upstairs, walk across the grass, sit on a bench in the Avenue of Oaks — and there, in my solitude, I enjoy the pleasure of weighing the rays of dead stars. Villiers De LIsleAdam
72
There is a wide yawning black infinity. In every direction the extension is endless, the sensation of depth is overwhelming. And the darkness is immortal. Where light exists, it is pure, blazing, fierce; but light exists almost nowhere, and the blackness itself is also pure and blazing and fierce. But most of all, there is very nearly nothing in the dark; except for little bits here and there, often associated with the light, this infinite receptacle is empty. This picture is strangely frightening. It should be familiar. It is our universe. Even these stars, which seem so numerous, are, as sand, as dust, or less than dust, in the enormity of the space in which there is nothing. Nothing! We are not without empathetic terror when we open Pascal’s Pensées and read, 'I am the great silent spaces between wo. Carl Sagan
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Full spectrum lights should be used in all daytime offices for good health. Steven Magee
74
For excellent health and a good skin color, I recommend that people sit next to a shady ultraviolet transmitting window when indoors. Steven Magee
75
Light brings us the news of the Universe. William Henry Bragg
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The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. Ferdinand Magellan
77
The evolutionists, piercing beneath the show of momentary stability, discovered, hidden in rudimentary organs, the discarded rubbish of the past. They detected the reptile under the lifted feathers of the bird, the lost terrestrial limbs dwindling beneath the blubber of the giant cetaceans. They saw life rushing outward from an unknown center, just as today the astronomer senses the galaxies fleeing into the infinity of darkness. As the spinning galactic clouds hurl stars and worlds across the night, so life, equally impelled by the centrifugal powers lurking in the germ cell, scatters the splintered radiance of consciousness and sends it prowling and contending through the thickets of the world. . Loren Eiseley
78
In the progressive growth of astronomy, physics or mechanical science was developed, and when this had been, to a certain degree, successfully cultivated, it gave birth to the science of chemistry. Justus Von Liebig
79
Earlier maps had underestimated the distances to other continents and exaggerated the outlines of individual nations. Now global dimensions could be set, with authority, by the celestial spheres. Indeed, King Louis XIV of France, confronted with a revised map of his domain based on accurate longitude measurements, reportedly complained that he was losing more territory to his astronomers than to his enemies. Dava Sobel
80
We need science education to produce scientists, but we need it equally to create literacy in the public. Man has a fundamental urge to comprehend the world about him, and science gives today the only world picture which we can consider as valid. It gives an understanding of the inside of the atom and of the whole universe, or the peculiar properties of the chemical substances and of the manner in which genes duplicate in biology. An educated layman can, of course, not contribute to science, but can enjoy and participate in many scientific discoveries which as constantly made. Such participation was quite common in the 19th century, but has unhappily declined. Literacy in science will enrich a person's life. Hans Bethe
81
The phenomena of nature, especially those that fall under the inspection of the astronomer, are to be viewed, not only with the usual attention to facts as they occur, but with the eye of reason and experience. William Herschel
82
The sciences are not sectarian. People do not persecute each other on account of disagreements in mathematics. Families are not divided about botany, and astronomy does not even tend to make a man hate his father and mother. It is what people do not know, that they persecute each other about. Science will bring, not a sword, but peace. Robert G. Ingersoll
83
At the base of the immense pillar, tiny Babylon was in shadow. Then the darkness climbed the tower, like a canopy unfurling upward. It moved slowly enough that Hillalum felt he could count the moments passing, but then it grew faster as it approached, until it raced past them faster than he could blink, and they were in twilight.. For the first time, he knew night for what it was: the shadow of the earth itself, cast against the sky. . Ted Chiang
84
Thus identified with astronomy, in proclaiming truths supposed to be hostile to Scripture, Geology has been denounced as the enemy of religion. The twin sisters of terrestrial and celestial physics have thus been joint-heirs of intolerance and persecution–unresisting victims in the crusade which ignorance and fanaticism are ever waging against science. When great truths are driven to make an appeal to reason, knowledge becomes criminal, and philosophers martyrs. Truth, however, like all moral powers, can neither be checked nor extinguished. When compressed, it but reacts the more. It crushes where it cannot expand–it burns where it is not allowed to shine. Human when originally divulged, it becomes divine when finally established. At first, the breath of a rage–at last it is the edict of a god. Endowed with such vital energy, astronomical truth has cut its way through the thick darkness of superstitious times, and, cheered by its conquests, Geology will find the same open path when it has triumphed over the less formidable obstacles of a civilized age. David Brewster
85
If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?–that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?–that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?–theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?–that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?–there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?–truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?–the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?–that has been the burden of all religions. Robert G. Ingersoll
86
For who could better describe the eye than God, Who made it? But as it is clearer than the day that God has left a good deal to our own efforts .. we should really follow in these things the thread of nature, by which first principles, reason and daily experience lead us. Therefore, He prompts the minds of great men to inquire into the nature which He created, and He furthers and conducts their studies. These things must be enough to us, and from Holy Scripture we should seek in the first place only those things which are necessary to salvation. . Georg Joachim Rheticus
87
There is talk of a new astrologer [Nicolaus Copernicus] who wants to prove that the earth moves and goes around instead of the sky, the sun, the moon, just as if somebody were moving in a carriage or ship might hold that he was sitting still and at rest while the earth and the trees walked and moved. But that is how things are nowadays: when a man wishes to be clever he must . invent something special, and the way he does it must needs be the best! The fool wants to turn the whole art of astronomy upside-down. However, as Holy Scripture tells us, so did Joshua bid the sun to stand still and not the earth.[ Martin Luther stating his objection to heliocentrism due to his Scripture's geocentrism] . Martin Luther
88
Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?[Lutheran theologian Abraham Calovius illustrating his objection to heliocentrism due to the Bible's support of geocentrism] Abraham Calovius
89
[They] pervert the course of nature [by saying] the sun does not move and that it is the earth that revolves and that it turns.[ John Calvin illustrating his opposition to heliocentrism in a sermon due to the Bible's support of geocentrism] John Calvin
90
At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe. Eric Chaisson
91
Though we might like to think so, humankind is not at any special, unique or privileged location in the gargantuan, perhaps infinite, Universe. Eric Chaisson
92
Away from the safety of your home, the universe was not made for your convenience. Edward Witten
93
He had never been satisfied and never would be. It wasn't success he craved, or even fame, it was history: he wanted to crack the universe open like a ripe watermelon, to arrange the mess of pulpy seeds before his dumbfounded colleagues. He wanted to take the dripping red fruit in his hands and quantify the guts of infinity to look back into the dawn of time and glimpse the very beginning. He wanted to be remembered. . Lily BrooksDalton
94
I'm confused. You make me confused. Just one glance at your eyes can mess up my whole world. My whole inner universe. The stars in my constellation are burning from the want to be in your eyes. They want to find the peace in those oceans. But you couldn't feel the burning light of my stars. You couldn't see the burning emotion of my body. So you walked away from my universe, leaving my lonely stars in the dark. Enna Margo
95
The stars, like dust, encircle me In living mists of light; And all of space I seem to see In one vast burst of sight Isaac Asimov
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...look up and see the madnessorganized in the stars. Kelli Russell Agodon
97
The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world. Neil Degrasse Tyson
98
Science, enabled by engineering, empowered by NASA, tells us not only that we are in the universe but that the universe is in us. And for me, that sense of belonging elevates, not denigrates, the ego. Neil Degrasse Tyson
99
I look forward to the day when the solar system becomes our collective backyard–explored not only with robots, but with the mind, body, and soul of our species. Neil Degrasse Tyson
100
Some people think emotionally more often than they think politically. Some think politically more often than they think rationally. Others never think rationally about anything at all. No judgment implied. Just an observation. Neil Degrasse Tyson