Astronomer Quotes

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere.

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.

The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff.

I don't want to believe. I want to know.

Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.

The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.

Our species needs, and deserves, a citizenry with minds wide awake and a basic understanding of how the world works.

We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.

A straight line can readily be drawn among each of the two series of points corresponding to the maxima and minima, thus showing that there is a simple relation between the brightness of the variables and their periods.

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.

You have to know the past to understand the present.

We can judge our progress by the courage of our question and the depth of our answers, our willingness to embrace what is true rather than what feels good.

The nuclear arms race is like two sworn enemies standing waist deep in gasoline, one with three matches, the other with five.

Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves.

I maintain there is much more wonder in science than in pseudoscience.

And in addition, to whatever measure this term has any meaning, science has the additional virtue, and it is not an inconsiderable one, of being true.

If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.

But the fact that some geniuses were laughed at does not imply that all who are laughed at are geniuses. They laughed at Columbus, they laughed at Fulton, they laughed at the Wright Brothers. But they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

I am often amazed at how much more capability and enthusiasm for science there is among elementary school youngsters than among college students.

Science is not only compatible with spirituality; it is a profound source of spirituality.

Who is more humble? The scientist who looks at the universe with an open mind and accepts whatever the universe has to teach us, or somebody who says everything in this book must be considered the literal truth and never mind the fallibility of all the human beings involved?

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

In Mozambique, the story goes, monkeys do not talk, because they know if they utter even a single word some man will come and put them to work.

I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking.

The truth may be puzzling. It may take some work to grapple with. It may be counterintuitive. It may contradict deeply held prejudices. It may not be consonant with what we desperately want to be true. But our preferences do not determine what's true.

It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science. It is only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.

If you look at Earth from space you see a dot, that's here.

That's home. That's us. It underscores the responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

The lifetime of a human being is measured by decades, the lifetime of the Sun is a hundred million times longer. Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day.

Think of how many religions attempt to validate themselves with prophecy.

Think of how many people rely on these prophecies, however vague, however unfulfilled, to support or prop up their beliefs. Yet has there ever been a religion with the prophetic accuracy and reliability of science? ... No other human institution comes close.

Chlorine is a deadly poison gas employed on European battlefields in World War I. Sodium is a corrosive metal which burns upon contact with water. Together they make a placid and unpoisonous material, table salt. Why each of these substances has the properties it does is a subject called chemistry.

Our solar system is fantastically bizarre.

There are worlds with features we never imagined. Storms larger than planets, moons with under-surface oceans, lakes of methane, worldlets that swap places...and that's just at Saturn.

There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world.

Better the hard truth, I say, than the comforting fantasy.

And in the final tolling it often turns out that the facts are more comforting than the fantasy.

The illegality of cannabis is outrageous, an impediment to full utilization of a drug which helps produce the serenity and insight, sensitivity and fellowship so desperately needed in this increasingly mad and dangerous world.

There is no better boat than a horoscope to help a man cross over the sea of life.

The cure for a fallacious argument is a better argument, not the suppression of ideas.

There is a river in the ocean. In the severest droughts it never fails, and in the mightiest floods it never overflows. Its banks and its bottom are of cold water, while its current is of warm. The Gulf of Mexico is its fountain, and its mouth is in the Arctic Sea. It is the Gulf Stream.

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.

We live on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam

Skeptical scrutiny is the means, in both science and religion, by which deep thoughts can be winnowed from deep nonsense.

In the beginning there were only probabilities.

The universe could only come into existence if someone observed it. It does not matter that the observers turned up several billion years later. The universe exists because we are aware of it.

I also wish that the Pledge of Allegiance were directed at the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, as it is when the President takes his oath of office, rather than to the flag and the nation

The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.

Science is a way of thinking much more than it is a body of knowledge.

When Kepler found his long-cherished belief did not agree with the most precise observation, he accepted the uncomfortable fact. He preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, that is the heart of science.

A lot of them complain because they say the word denial puts them in the same bin as holocaust deniers. That's too bad. But the thing is, they do have something in common: a denial of evidence and of scientific consensus.

[Kepler] preferred the hard truth to his dearest illusions, and that is the heart of science.

We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.

Other intelligent life-forms will differ greatly in appearance - they may resemble the creature in E.T. or startle us with their beauty - but life itself is common, I'm certain.

Pseudoscience is like a virus. At low levels, it's no big deal, but when it reaches a certain threshold it becomes sickening.

We, all of us, are what happens when a primordial mixture of hydrogen and helium evolves for so long that it begins to ask where it came from.