Rebecca Solnit Quotes

Everything has to do with geography.

We're not sane enough yet to enter space until we learn to live together in peace on Earth.

I ended up realizing that NASA was unlikely to get me into space, or get me to the moon or beyond, and I needed some other way to drive this.

I think that it's good for us to be able to travel in space and do research in space, and I emphasize the research, because space travel to me is far more than just seeing how far we can go.

The conquest of space is worth the risk of life.

I have always been very interested in landscape... I find that all natural forms are a source of unending interest - tree trunks, the growth of branches from the trunk, each finding its own individual air-space.

On and on they flew, over the countryside parceled out in patches of green and brown, over roads and rivers winding through the landscapes like strips of matte and glossy ribbon.

I love traveling. I like to keep moving. I love the big open spaces in America.

And we came forth to contemplate the stars.

Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.

Ever since I saw the moon landing as a young teenager, I was determined I would go into space one day.

Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that's life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever.

Traveling through space is stupifyingly monotonous.

What can there be concerning outer space but ignorance?

We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.

The piece of equipment I'm most found off is my telescope. The other night I had a superb view of the moon.

The bounties of space, of infinite outwardness, were three: empty heroics, low comedy, and pointless death.

The important thing about travel in foreign lands is that it breaks the speech habits and makes you blab less, and breaks the habitual space-feeling because of different village plans and different landscapes. It is less important that there are different mores, for you counteract these with your own reaction-formations.

I suppose my interest in looking for life elsewhere in the universe really dates back to my teens. What teenager doesn't look up at the sky at night and think am I alone in the universe? Well most people get over it, but I never did and though I made a career more in physics and cosmology than astrobiology I've always had a soft spot for the subject of life because it does seem so mysterious.

The telescope... is a conduit to the cosmos.

That is a big question we all have: are we alone in the universe? And exoplanets confirm the suspicion that planets are not rare.

Perhaps someday in the distant future, dinosaurs may once again rule the Earth. If they ever learn to watch the stars, then maybe they will find our ruins in the sky.

I don't know what's up there / Beyond the sky

We take death to reach a star