Seneca the Younger Quotes

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

Astronomy is ... the only progressive Science which the ancient world produced.

I cannot possibly conceive of my planet Earth as the centre of a three-tiered universe. I know rather that the sun, around which my planet Earth revolves, is a middle sized star in a galaxy called the Milky Way that has over a hundred billion other suns or stars within it.

Any astrophysicist does not feel small looking up at the universe; we feel large.

Do not look at stars as bright spots only. Try to take in the vastness of the universe.

In less than a hundred years, we have found a new way to think of ourselves. From sitting at the center of the universe, we now find ourselves orbiting an average-sized sun, which is just one of millions of stars in our own Milky Way galaxy.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

My interest in astronomy grew from the play 'Space' that I did, where I had to learn where my character was from. I had to study the stars and figure where everything was and how I got here and all of those things.

It's been said that astronomy is a humbling and, I might add, a character-building experience.

Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture.

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.

The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything ins pace int he past, some as they were before the Earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

The public has an incredible capacity for appreciating the wonder of our planet, our solar system, our universe.

Thinking about the universe has now been handed over to specialists. The rest of us merely read about it.

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

Pure science - this vision of the universe as 15 billion light years across - I am bedazzled and awed by it.

Many people find the universe confusing - it's not.

It is sound judgment to hope that in the not too distant future we shall be competent to understand so simple a thing as a star.

Being outside during the space walk, the view of the Earth is just spectacular, and getting a chance to do that is just unbelievable, everything about it. You are going around the Earth at 17,500 miles an hour, so you have 45 minutes of sunlight followed by 45 minutes of darkness. You do a lap every 90 minutes.

It's hard to know which stars in the sky will turn into black holes. And which ones will open up worm holes into entire new universes.

We are living through a remarkably privileged era, when certain deep truths about the cosmos are still within reach of the human spirit of exploration.

When you are up there, feeling infinite space, the earth looks like a fragile planet against the immense universe. We are just another fleeting species, passing by. I do believe there is life elsewhere, and we are not alone. But not having found an alternate place for now, it is crucial to take care of the one place we do have.

The universe is a great mystery.

Classifying the stars has helped materially in all studies of the structure of the universe.

In future, children won't perceive the stars as mere twinkling points of light: they'll learn that each is a 'Sun', orbited by planets fully as interesting as those in our Solar system.