Quotes I like (related to astronomy)

"Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth." Ptolemy

"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go." E. E. Cummings

"For I dipped into the Future, far as the human eye could see; saw the vision of the world, and all the wonder that would be." Tennyson

"There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: your tax dollar will go farther." Wernher von Braun

"How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story "Nightfall," about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen." Rober Ebert - Chicago Sun Times

"The meek shall inherit the Earth. And the rest of us will go to the stars." Omni Magazine

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

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." Mark Russell


"It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other." Plato

"The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons." Edwin Powell Hubble

"Astronomers say the universe is finite, which is a comforting thought for those people who can't remember where they leave things." Woody Allen

"The universe is a big place, perhaps the biggest." Kilgore Trout

"I'm astounded by people who want to "know" the universe when it's hard enough to find your way around Chinatown." Woody Allen

"What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth ? Judging from realistic simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we can assume it will be pretty bad." Dave Barry

"The surest sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the universe is that it has never tried to contact us." Calvin & Hobbes

"The universe is like a safe to which there is a combination — but the combination is locked up in the safe." Peter deVries

"Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. " Arthur C. Clarke

"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

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

"I wonder why. I wonder why. I wonder why I wonder. I wonder why I wonder why I wonder." Richard Feynman

"If we are still here to witness the destruction of our planet some five billion years or more hence, then we will have achieved something so unprecedented in the history of life that we should be willing to sing our swansong with joy - Sic Transit Gloria Mundi." Stephen Jay Gould

"The destruction of this planet would have no significance on a cosmic scale: to an observer in the Andromeda nebula, the sign of our extinction would be no more than a match flaring for a second in the heavens: and if that match does blaze in the darkness there will be none to mourn a race that used a power that could have lit a beacon in the stars to light its funeral pyre. The choice is ours." Stanley Kubrick "Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars." Henry Van Dyke

"In the country the darkness of night is friendly and familiar, but in a city, with its blaze of lights, it is unnatural, hostile and menacing. It is like a monstrous vulture that hovers, biding its time." Somerset Maugham

"The treasures hidden in the heavens are so rich that the human mind shall never be lacking in fresh nourishment." Johannes Kepler

"All truths are easy to understand once they are discovered; the point is to discover them." Galileo