Quote of the day, mostly related to astronomy.

[messier 111]

“Philosophy [nature] is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes -- I mean the universe -- but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth.”
― Galileo

[messier 111]

“It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.”
― Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space

[messier 111]

“Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience.”
― C.S. Lewis

[messier 111]

“We ought to regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its antecedent state and as the cause of the state that is to follow. An intelligence knowing all the forces acting in nature at a given instant, as well as the momentary positions of all things in the universe, would be able to comprehend in one single formula the motions of the largest bodies as well as the lightest atoms in the world, provided that its intellect were sufficiently powerful to subject all data to analysis; to it nothing would be uncertain, the future as well as the past would be present to its eyes. The perfection that the human mind has been able to give to astronomy affords but a feeble outline of such an intelligence.”
― Pierre Simon de Laplace

[messier 111]

“Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use.”
― Johannes Kepler, Epitome of Copernican Astronomy and Harmonies of the World

[messier 111]

“The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres- they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same.”
― Steven Erikson, House of Chains

[messier 111]

“The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.”
― Edwin Powell Hubble, The Realm of the Nebulae

[messier 111]

“For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere.
(on commenting the text of Genesis 1:6)”
― John Calvin

[messier 111]

“In very different ways, the possibility that the universe is teeming with life, and the opposite possibility that we are totally alone, are equally exciting. Either way, the urge to know more about the universe seems to me irresistible, and I cannot imagine that anybody of truly poetic sensibility could disagree.”
― Richard Dawkins, Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder

[messier 111]

“Surely it is a great thing to increase the numerous host of fixed stars previously visible to the unaided vision, adding countless more which have never before been seen, exposing these plainly to the eye in numbers ten times exceeding the old and familiar stars.”
― Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo

[messier 111]

“Infinity took me to places I had never been to before.”
― Steven Magee

[messier 111]

“The more of us that feel the universe, the better off we will be in this world.”
― Neil deGrasse Tyson

[messier 111]

Any foolish boy can stamp on a beetle, but all the professors in the world cannot make a beetle.
— Arthur Schopenhauer, 1788-1860, German philosopher

[messier 111]

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.
— Will Durant, 1885-1981, American historian & philosopher

[messier 111]

When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.
— Arthur Clarke, 1917-2008, British Sci-Fi writer

[helicon]

When you finally understand the universe, it will not only be stranger than you imagine, it will be stranger than you can imagine.
— Arthur Clarke, 1917-2008, British Sci-Fi writer

So True.

[messier 111]

Science is spectral analysis. Art is light synthesis.
— Karl Kraus, 1874-1936, Austrian writer

[messier 111]

Science is magic that works.
— Kurt Vonnegut, 1922-2007, American writer

[messier 111]

Scientists are peeping toms at the keyhole of eternity.
— Arthur Koestler, 1905-1983, Hungarian-British writer

[messier 111]

There is no national science, just as there is no national multiplication table; what is national is no longer science.
— Anton Chekhov, 1860-1904, Russian writer