| Quote | Author | Date | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well, on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be. |
Douglas Adams | 1952 – 2001 | The Salmon of Doubt |
Every passing hour brings the Solar System forty-three thousand miles closer to Globular Cluster M13 in Hercules — and still there are some misfits who insist that there is no such thing as progress. |
Kurt Vonnegut | 1922 – 2007 | |
A tiny blue dot set in a sunbeam. Here it is. That’s where we live. That’s home. We humans are one species and this is our world. It is our responsibility to cherish it. Of all the worlds in our solar system, the only one so far as we know, graced by life. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update) |
This is a present from a small distant world, a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music, our thoughts, and our feelings. We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours. We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilisations. This record represents our hope and our determination, and our good will in a vast and awesome universe. |
Jimmy Carter | born 1924 | Message to intelligent alien life forms in letter aboard Voyager spacecraft |
Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed. That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. |
Neil Armstrong | 1930 – 2012 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe, the more often and the more seriously reflection concentrates upon them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. |
Immanuel Kant | 1724 – 1804 | Knowles, E. (1999). The Oxford dictionary of quotations. Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
The nature of life on earth and the quest for life elsewhere are the two sides of the same question: the search for who we are. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update) |
I do not see how astronomers can help feeling exquisitely insignificant, for every new page of the Book of the Heavens they open reveals to them more and more that the world we are so proud of is to the universe of careening globes as is one mosquito to the winged and hoofed flocks and herds that darken the air and populate the plains and forests of all the earth. If you killed the mosquito would it be missed? Verily, What is Man, that he should be considered of God? |
Mark Twain | 1835 – 1910 | |
Where is everybody? |
Enrico Fermi | 1901 – 1954 | Asked after his probability estimates for extraterrestrial life visiting earth were found to be very high. |
This Voyager spacecraft was constructed by the United States of America. We are a community of 240 million human beings among the more than 4 billion who inhabit the planet Earth. We human beings are still divided into nation states, but these states are rapidly becoming a single global civilisation. |
Jimmy Carter | born 1924 | Beginning of letter to intelligent alien life forms aboard Voyager spacecraft |
Planets were very large places, on any scale but that of the spaces in between them. |
Ursula K. Le Guin | born 1929 | City of Illusions (1967) |
I see no god up here. |
Yuri Gagarin | 1934 – 1968 | Yuri was the first Human to enter space and orbit the Earth. : Misattributed |
So much universe, and so little time. |
Terry Pratchett | 1948 – 2015 | |
I looked and looked but I didn’t see God. |
Yuri Gagarin | 1934 – 1968 | Yuri was the first Human to enter space and orbit the Earth. : Disputed |
This vast number of worlds, the enormous scale of the universe… has not been taken into account, even superficially, in virtually no religion, and especially in no Western religions. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God (2006) |
Some part of our being knows this is where we came from. We long to return. And we can. Because the cosmos is also within us. We’re made of star-stuff. We are a way for the cosmos to know itself. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update) |
The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn’t have a space program. |
Larry Niven | born 1938 | |
…and yet it moves. |
Galileo Galilei | 1564 – 1642 | Referring to Earth. Muttered after confessing his sins of holding and defending the Copernican System. : Disputed |
A philosopher once asked, “Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?” Pointless, really… “Do the stars gaze back?” Now, that’s a question. |
Neil Gaiman | born 1960 | |
Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g — what we’re comfortable with on good old terra firma — to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space |
Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still. We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars. |
Carl Sagan | 1934 – 1996 | Cosmos (1980) |
I love to revel in philosophical matters, especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures and I have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major. |
Mark Twain | 1835 – 1910 | |
If I were going to construct a God I would furnish him with some ways and qualities and characteristics which the Present (Bible) one lacks…..He would spend some of his eternities in trying to forgive himself for making man unhappy when he could have made him happy with the same effort and he would spend the rest of them in studying astronomy. |
Mark Twain | 1835 – 1910 | |
If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon. |
Galileo Galilei | 1564 – 1642 | |
Spectrum analysis enabled the astronomer to tell when a star was advancing head on, and when it was going the other way. This was regarded as very precious. Why the astronomer wanted to know, is not stated; nor what he could sell out for, when he did know. An astronomer’s notions about preciousness were loose. They were not much regarded by practical men, and seldom excited a broker. |
Mark Twain | 1835 – 1910 |