Astronomers Quotes - Page 4

• My parents gave me a small telescope, then I built my own, and one thing led to another. So thats how I ended up going from being a hobby astronomer to a professional astronomer.

  Dimitar Sasselov

  Parent, Hobbies, Telescopes

  "Professor Spotlight: Sasselov on Super-Earths". Interview with Brian C. Zhang, www.thecrimson.com. February 10, 2012.

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• Bonaparte knew but one merit, and rewarded in one and the same way the good soldier, the good astronomer, the good poet, the good player.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Player, Soldier, Way

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2000). “Selected Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson: (A Modern Library E-Book)”, p.233, Modern Library

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• Just because a man glances up at the sky at night does not make him an astronomer, you know.

  John Boyne

  Night, Men, Sky

  "The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". Book by John Boyne, www.theguardian.com. January 5, 2006.

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• When I was a little kid back in Moscow, Russia, I've always thought I would become an artist or a folk dancer or an astronomer. In fact, if you'd asked me then about a life of solitary writing I would have said, "Oh how boring! Imagine, to sit at a desk all day and just write."

  Vera Nazarian

  Writing, Kids, Artist

  Source: fantasyworlds.wordpress.com

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• For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

  Catherine Wilson

  Stars, Space, Doctrine

  Source: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I may remind you that history is not a branch of literature. The facts of history, like the facts of geology or astronomy, can supply material for literary art; for manifest reasons they lend themselves to artistic representation far more readily than those of the natural sciences; but to clothe the story of human society in a literary dress is no more the part of a historian as a historian, than it is the part of an astronomer as an astronomer to present in an artistic shape the story of the stars.

  J. B. Bury

  Art, Stars, Dresses

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• An undevout astronomer is mad.

  Edward Young

  Mad

  'The Complaint: Night Thoughts' (1742-5) 'Night 9' l. 769

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• It calls Devotion! genuine growth of night! Devotion! Daughter of Astronomy! An undevout astronomer is mad!

  Edward Young

  Daughter, Night, Mad

  'The Complaint: Night Thoughts' (1742-5) 'Night 9' l. 769

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• Surely, we are provided with senses as well fitted to penetrate the spaces of the real, the substantial, the eternal, as these outward are to penetrate the material universe. Veias, Menu, Zoroaster, Socrates, Christ, Shakespeare, Swedenborg,--these are some of our astronomers.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Real, Space, Transcendentalism

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers”, p.307, Courier Corporation

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• The human heart concerns us more than the poring into microscopes, and is larger than can be measured by the pompous figures of the astronomer.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Heart, Science, Microscopes

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “Nature and Other Essays”, p.108, Courier Corporation

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• The astronomer who catalogues the stars cannot add one atom to the universe; the poet can call an universe from the atom.

  Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

  Stars, Atoms, Add

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• The field cannot be well seen from within the field. The astronomer must have his diameter of the earth's orbit as a base to fix the parallax of any other star

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Stars, Orbit, Earth

  Ralph Waldo Emerson (2012). “The Selected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson”, p.96, Graphic Arts Books

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• Female physicists, astronomers and mathematicians are up against more than 2,000 years of convention that has long portrayed these fields as inherently male.

  Margaret Wertheim

  Years, Long, Males

  "Numbers Are Male, Said Pythagoras, and the Idea Persists". www.nytimes.com. October 3, 2006.

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• Throughout history, humankind has been resistant to change and to the acceptance of new ideas... When Galileo discovered the moons of Jupiter, the astronomers of that time refused to accept or even to look at these satellites because the existence of these moons conflicted with their accepted beliefs. So it is now with psychiatrists and other therapists, who refuse to examine and evaluate the considerable evidence being gathered about survival after bodily death and about past life memories. Their eyes are tightly shut.

  Brian Weiss

  Memories, Healing, Eye

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• Yet the widespread planetary theories, advanced by Ptolemy and most other astronomers, although consistent with the numerical data, seemed likewise to present no small difficulty. For these theories were not adequate unless they also conceived certain equalizing circles, which made the planet appear to move at all times with uniform velocity neither on its deferent sphere nor about its own epicycle's center.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Moving, Science, Data

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• I have been told that one of the reasons the astronomers of the world cooperate is the fact that there is no one nation from which the entire sphere of the sky can be seen. Perhaps there is in that fact a parable for national statesmen, whose political horizons are all too often limited by national horizons.

  Adlai Stevenson I

  Sky, Astrology, Political

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• The body is extremely important to me, because it is a planet. For instance, if you compare Earth and an astronomer, you will see that the man is a planet.

  Paul Virilio

  Men, Important, Earth

  Source: ctheory.net

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• I was studying the sky like I was an astronomer, except it was daytime and I didn't have a telescope, so I was just an idiot.

  Sherman Alexie

  Sky, Telescopes, Study

  Sherman Alexie (2016). “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian”, p.68, Random House

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• Bach is like an astronomer who, with the help of ciphers, finds the most wonderful stars.

  Frederic Chopin

  Stars, Ciphers, Helping

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• The scorn which I had reason to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon completely the work which I had undertaken. . . . Astronomy is written for astronomers. To them my work too will seem, unless I am mistaken, to make some contribution.

  Nicolaus Copernicus

  Novelty, Opinion, Astronomy

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• When people on airplanes ask me what I do, I used to say I was a physicist, which ended the discussion. I once said I was a cosmologist, but they started asking me about makeup, and the title 'astronomer' gets confused with astrologer. Now I say I make maps.

  Margaret Geller

  Confused, Airplane, Makeup

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• Astronomers ought to be able to ask fundamental questions without accelerators

  Saul Perlmutter

  Fundamentals, Able, Ought

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• It is sometimes said that we should never believe a scientific theory until it is verified by experiment. But a famous astronomer has also stated that we should never believe an observation until it is confirmed by a theory.

  Joao Magueijo

  Believe, Sometimes, Should

  João Magueijo (2004). “Faster Than the Speed of Light: The Story of a Scientific Speculation”, Penguin Group USA

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• 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

  Kings, Distance, Enemy

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• There are some things we do much better than computers, but since most of chess is tactically based they do many things better than humans. And this imbalance remains. I no longer have any issues. It's bit like asking an astronomer, does he mind that a telescope does all the work. He is used to it. It is just an incredible tool that you can use.

  Viswanathan Anand

  Issues, Mind, Doe

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