Star Gazing Quotes

• If you want to have a program for moving out into the universe, you have to think in centuries not in decades.

  Freeman Dyson

  Moving, Thinking, Moon

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• The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us.

  Ralph Waldo Emerson

  Art, Sky, Space

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• If people looked at the stars each night, they'd live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize that there are more important things than what people do all day.

  Bill Watterson

  Inspirational, Nature, Stars

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• No sight is more provocative of awe than is the night sky.

  Llewelyn Powys

  Good Night, Sight, Sky

  Llewelyn Powys (1961). “Llewelyn Powys: A Selection from His Writings”

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• For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.

  Vincent Van Gogh

  Inspirational, Dream, Stars

  Vincent van Gogh, Rachel Barnes (1990). “Van Gogh by Vincent”

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• If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I'll bet they'd live a lot differently.

  Bill Watterson

  Stars, Funny Life, Cute Life

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• Stargazing is one of the most profoundly human things one can do. But perhaps we must more frequently tear ourselves away from the mystery and beauty of the starry heavens above, and rather inspect, admire and foster the moral law within.

  Jack Gleeson

  Beauty, Stars, Law

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• A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now that's a question.

  Neil Gaiman

  Stars, Philosopher, Stardust

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• Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars,
  blown about us by the wind, and drink the
  universe in a glass of rain.

  Ihab Hassan

  Stars, Rain, Glasses

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• Space is the stature of God.

  Joseph Joubert

  God, Space, Stature

  Joseph Joubert (1928). “Pensées and letters of Joseph Joubert”

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• The universe is wider than our views of it.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Science, Views, Space

  Henry David Thoreau (2013). “The Essential Thoreau”, p.185, Simon and Schuster

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• 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.

  Roger Ebert

  Stars, Queens, Night

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• Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

  Walt Whitman

  Space, Miracle, Leaves Of Grass

  Walt Whitman, Sculley Bradley, Harold W. Blodgett (2008). “Leaves of Grass: A Textual Variorum of the Printed Poems, 1855-1856”, p.256, NYU Press

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• The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause. The apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible on ordinary occasions to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity.

  Edmund Burke

  Stars, Lying, Views

  Edmund Burke (1871). “The Works of the Right Honorable Edmund Burke”, p.154

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• I'm not coming in . . . this is fun.

  Edward Higgins White

  Fun, Moon, Walking

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• As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.

  Henry David Thoreau

  Running, Men, Clouds

  Henry David Thoreau, Barry Andrews (2005). “True Harvest: Readings from Henry David Thoreau for Every Day of the Year”, p.29, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations

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• What struck me most was the silence. It was a great silence, unlike any I have encountered on Earth, so vast and deep that I began to hear my own body: my heart beating, my blood vessels pulsing, even the rustle of my muscles moving over each other seemed audible. There were more stars in the sky than I had expected. The sky was deep black, yet at the same time bright with sunlight.

  Alexey Leonov

  Stars, Moving, Heart

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• If humans one day become extinct from a catastrophic collision, there would be no greater tragedy in the history of life in the universe. Not because we lacked the brain power to protect ourselves but because we lacked the foresight. The dominant species that replaces us in post-apocalyptic Earth just might wonder, as they gaze upon our mounted skeletons in their natural history museums, why large headed Homo sapiens fared no better than the proverbially peabrained dinosaurs.

  Neil deGrasse Tyson

  Moon, Skeletons, Museums

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• First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.

  Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

  Dream, Ideas, Space

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• This brief century of ours is arguably the most significant one in the history of our universe. We'll have the technology either to self-destruct, or [to] seed our cosmos with life. The situation is so unstable that I doubt we can dwell at this fork in the road for more than another hundred years. But if we end up going the life route instead of the death route, then in a distant future our cosmos will be teaming with life, all of which can be traced back to what we do-here and now. I don't know how we'll be thought of, but I'm sure that we won't be remembered as insignificant.

  Max Tegmark

  Moon, Technology, Self

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• I think it's going to be great if people can buy a ticket to fly up and see black sky and the stars. I'd like to do it myself-but probably after it has flown a serious number of times first!

  Paul Allen

  Stars, Thinking, Sky

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• Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos.

  Martin Rees

  Moon, Civilization, Space

  "Our Final Hour: A Scientist's Warning". Book by Martin Rees, 2003.

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• The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.

  William E. Burrows

  Moon, Space, Compelling Reason

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• During the period of the Saturn-Apollo missions we were pilgrims in space, ranging from home in search of knowledge. Now we will become shepherds tending our technological flocks, but like the shepherds of old, we will keep our eyes fixed on the heavens.

  Jimmy Carter

  Home, Eye, Space

  United States. President (1977-1981 : Carter), Jimmy Carter (1979). “Jimmy Carter”

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• As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.

  David Grinspoon

  Moon, Self, Long

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