Star Gazing Quotes - Page 2

• 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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• Since stars appear to be suns, and suns, according to the common opinion, are bodies that serve to enlighten, warm, and sustain a system of planets, we may have an idea of the numberless globes that serve for the habitaton of living creatures.

  William Herschel

  Stars, Moon, Ideas

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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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• I saw for the first time the earth's shape. I could easily see the shores of continents, islands, great rivers, folds of the terrain, large bodies of water. The horizon is dark blue, smoothly turning to black. . . the feelings which filled me I can express with one word-joy.

  Yuri Gagarin

  Airplane, Dark, Islands

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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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• 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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• Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.

  Robert Fulghum

  Stars, Space, Heaven

  Robert Fulghum (2004). “All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten: Uncommon Thoughts on Common Things”, p.140, Ballantine Books

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• Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Space, Orbit, Earth

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• The flight was extremely normal . . . for the first 36 seconds then after that got very interesting.

  Pete Conrad

  Interesting, Apollo, Firsts

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• Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

  Gene Roddenberry

  Believe, Moving, Reality

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• Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.

  George Santayana

  God, Space, Heaven

  George Santayana, Marianne S. Wokeck, Martin A. Coleman, James Gouinlock (2011). “The Life of Reason or The Phases of Human Progress: Introduction and Reason in Common Sense, Volume VII, Book One”, p.75, MIT Press

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• This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o-erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.

  William Shakespeare

  Fire, Air, Space

  'Hamlet' (1601) act 2, sc. 2, l. [316]

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• Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.

  Robert A. Heinlein

  Race, Space, Way

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• I love to revel in philosophical matters-especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures and have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major.

  Mark Twain

  Dog, Stars, Philosophical

  Mark Twain (2016). “The Wit and Wisdom of Mark Twain”, p.48, Chartwell

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• There is beauty in space, and it is orderly. There is no weather, and there is regularity. It is predictable. Just look at our little Explorer; you can set your clock by it-literally; it is more accurate than your clock. Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly.

  Wernher von Braun

  Law, Weather, Space

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• We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Space, People, Needs

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• I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.

  William Shatner

  Men, Ideas, Space

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• I've been asked about UFOs and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.

  Gene Cernan

  Civilization, Alien Life, Astronaut

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• We should do astronomy because it is beautiful and because it is fun. We should do it because people want to know. We want to know our place in the universe and how things happen.

  John N. Bahcall

  Beautiful, Fun, Space

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• To venture into space we must be strong-willed and determined. We must be fully committed to its exploration and discovery; space permits no half measures and is unforgiving of mistakes.

  Henry Joy McCracken

  Being Strong, Mistake, Discovery

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• This vehicle is performing like a champ. I've got a super spaceship under me.

  Robert Crippen

  Airplane, Aviation, Spaceships

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• The powered flight took a total of about eight and a half minutes. It seemed to me it had gone by in a lash. We had gone from sitting still on the launch pad at the Kennedy Space Center to traveling at 17,500 miles an hour in that eight and a half minutes. It is still mind-boggling to me. I recall making some statement on the air-to-ground radio for the benefit of my fellow astronauts, who had also been in the program a long time, that it was well worth the wait.

  Robert Crippen

  Airplane, Eight, Sitting Still

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• Looks like a sand pile my kids have been playing in for a long time - it's all beat up - no definition - just a lot of bumps and holes.

  William Anders

  Airplane, Kids, Long

  Transcript of Apollo 8 Flight Journal, history.nasa.gov. December 24, 1968.

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• The Moon is essentially gray - no color - looks like plaster of paris - soft of gray sand.

  Jim Lovell

  Airplane, Moon, Color

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