Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

 

— Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
Aphorism 23 in Notebook C (1772-1773), as translated by R.J. Hollingdale in Aphorisms (1990). Reprinted as The Waste Books (2000), 35.

[GCoyote]

[messier 111]

“God does not care about our mathematical difficulties. He integrates empirically”
— Albert Einstein

[messier 111]

“it is possible to reduce the laws of nature to simple principles and that their simplicity, and the technical difficulties, forms a criterion of the beauty of our theories.”
— Albert Einstein

[messier 111]

… how the real proof should run. The main thing is the content, not the mathematics. With mathematics one can prove anything.
— Albert Einstein

[messier 111]

[A man] must learn to understand the motives of human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings human beings, their illusions, and their sufferings in order to acquire a proper relationship to individual fellow-men and to the community. These precious things … primarily constitutes and preserves culture. This is what I have in mind when I recommend the “humanities” as important, not just dry specialized knowledge in the fields of history and philosophy.
— Albert Einstein

[messier 111]

[An outsider views a scientist] as a type of unscrupulous opportunist: he appears as a realist, insofar as he seeks to describe the world independent of the act of perception; as idealist insofar as he looks upon the concepts and theories as the free inventions of the human spirit (not logically derivable from that which is empirically given); as positivist insofar as he considers his concepts and theories justified only to the extent to which they furnish a logical representation of relations among sense experiences. He may even appear as Platonist or Pythagorean insofar as he considers the viewpoint of logical simplicity as an indispensable and effective tool of his research.

[GCoyote]

[messier 111]

Keep your face to the sunshine and you cannot see a shadow.

Helen Keller

[messier 111]

In every day, there are 1,440 minutes. That means we have 1,440 daily opportunities to make a positive impact.

Les Brown

[messier 111]

The sun himself is weak when he first rises, and gathers strength and courage as the day gets on.

Charles Dickens

[messier 111]

Sunshine is my quest.
Winston Churchill

[messier 111]

The Sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.
Henry Ward Beecher

[messier 111]

Thou art the Sun of other days. They shine by giving back the rays.
John Keble

[messier 111]

In the Sun, I feel as one.
Kurt Cobain

[messier 111]

The Sun illuminates only the eyes of the man but shines into the eye and the heart of the child.
Ralph Waldo Emerson

[messier 111]

A flower cannot blossom without sunshine, and man cannot live without love.
Max Müller

[messier 111]

A smile is the same as sunshine; it banishes winter from the human countenance.
Victor Hugo

[messier 111]

Shoot for the Moon - even if you miss it, you will land among the stars.
Les Brown

[messier 111]

Don't worry if you're making waves just by being yourself. The Moon does it all the time.
Scott Stabile