Georg C. Lichtenberg 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.

For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known: it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God.

Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology.

Nature hasn't gone anywhere. It is all around us, all the planets, galaxies and so on. We are nothing in comparison.

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.

No star seemed less than what science has taught us that it is.

Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility.

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

Astronomy, that micography of heaven, is the most magnificent of the sciences. ... Astronomy has its clear side and its luminous side; on its clear side it is tinctured with algebra, on its luminous side with poetry.

Look up at the stars and you're gone.

We're just one rock surrounded by this immense 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.

At the age of eight, I bought my first telescope and would spend hours gazing at the moon and stars. I remember thinking what it must have been like when man first realized that we were only a very small part of the overall picture.

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.

The lunar flights give you a correct perception of our existence. You look back at Earth from the moon, and you can put your thumb up to the window and hide the Earth behind your thumb. Everything you've ever known is behind your thumb, and that blue-and-white ball is orbiting a rather normal star, tucked away on the outer edge of a galaxy.

Mankind is led into the darkness beyond our world by the inspiration of discovery and the longing to understand. Our journey into space will go on.

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

I'll go out at night and look up at the stars and think, 'How ridiculously inconsequential I am in the scheme of things.'

Look at the sky; remind yourself of the cosmos. Seek vastness at every opportunity in order to see the smallness of yourself.

I am a great fan of the universe, which I take literally: as one. All of it interests me, and it interests me in detail.

On a really dark night, you can see between 1,000 and 1,500 stars, and there are millions more that haven't been discovered. It is so easy to think that the world revolves around you, but all you have to do is stare up at the sky to realize it isn't that way at all. -Brian Fitzgerald

A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the study of so vast a subject. A time will come when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them.

Of all the sciences, astronomy was the one the superstitious liked least.

I think a scientist's job is to explore the Universe, to explore the cosmos around us. People always want to know - why is that useful? Well, on just pure fundamental grounds, on some level it's like art, it's like umm, music, it's aesthetics, it's like philosophy. You want to know where you are in the Universe.

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.