Universal Context Quotes

Feeling a little small? Well, in the context of the cosmos, we are small.

Knowing you're a child of the creator of the universe changes everything.

The Earth is round, and is inhabited on all sides, is insignificantly small, and is borne through the stars.

I try to keep this in mind when tied in to a rope 75 feet up in a tree... The history of ideas about our place in the universe has been a long series of let-downs for those who like to believe we are special.

We are quite small in the big scheme of things.

I like to think that we’re revolving on this planet and revolving through the galaxy. I love having context that’s so much bigger than I can fathom. It’s fantastic to realise how insignificant you are.

From the moon, the Earth is so small and so fragile, and such a precious little spot in that Universe, that you can block it out with your thumb. Then you realize that on that spot, that little blue and white thing, is everything that means anything to you — all of history and music and poetry and art and death and birth and love, tears, joy, games, all of it right there on that little spot that you can cover with your thumb. And you realize from that perspective that you’ve changed forever, that there is something new there, that the relationship is no longer what it was.

Science is not just there for technology. It's part of what addressing who you are in the universe and understanding your place in the cosmos. Good art, good literature, good music - all of that is for that and science is a part of it.

The massive bulk of the earth does indeed shrink to insignificance in comparison with the size of the heavens.

He knoweth nothing as he ought to know it, who thinketh he knoweth anything without seeing its place and the manner how it relateth to God, angels, and men, and to all the creatures in earth, heaven and hell, time and eternity.

When we look up at the night sky and wonder, 'Is there anyone else out there?' we're also asking who we are in relation to them.

Mankind is not special by virtue of our address in the universe, or what spins around us, or because life originated here. Slowly, but surely, we've been compelled to renounce the comfort of these beliefs.

Is it not careless to become too local when there are four hundred billion stars in our galaxy alone.

Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life.

It is not easy to tear any event out of the context of the universe in which it occurred without detaching from it some factor that influenced it.

When we are chafed and fretted by small cares, a look at the stars will show us the littleness of our own interests.

I grew up in this business... A lot of my life has been centered around this question about how NASA is helping us to understand our own home planet... and to understand our place in the universe.

In all the broad Universe there is no other hope for Man than ourselves.

We have looked first at man with his vanities and greed and his problems of a day or a year; and then only, and from this biased point of view, we have looked outward at the earth he has inhabited so briefly and at the universe in which our earth is so minute a part. Yet these are the great realities, and against them we see our human problems in a different perspective. Perhaps if we reversed the telescope and looked at man down these long vistas, we should find less time and inclination to plan for our own destruction.