American Astronomer Quotes

Edwin Hubble

Percival Lowell

Simon Newcomb

Henrietta Swan Leavitt

Gerard Kuiper

Henry Norris Russell

Harlow Shapley

If the universe is a universe of thought then its creations must have been an act of thought.

Science does not, I think, give a positive answer to questions concerning the immortality of the human soul...

Margaret Fuller: I accept the Universe. Thomas Carlyle: Gad! she'd better!

William Wallace Campbell

A life spent in the routine of science need not destroy the attractive human element of a woman's nature.

Annie Jump Cannon

When theory runs too far ahead of what can be measured, a field becomes more philosophy than science.

Christopher McKee

There is a point of view among astronomical researchers that is generally referred to as the Principle of Mediocrity.... If the Sun and its retinue of worlds is only one system among many, then many other systems will be like ours: home to life. Indeed, to the extent that this is true, we should be prepared for the possibility that, even in the Milky Way galaxy, billions of planets may be carpeted by the dirty, nasty business known as life.

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.

Whenever we look in nature we can see spiral forms in the uncurling fern, the snail, the nautilus shell, the hurricane, the stirred cup of coffee, the water that swirls out of a wash bowl. Perhaps we shouldn't be surprised to see spirals in the great star systems whirling in space. Yet they remain a great, intriguing question.

Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin

The way of truth is along the path of intellectual sincerity.

Henry Smith Pritchett

Young man, I am afraid you are wasting your time. If there were any more planets they would have been found long before this.

The electrons are like little organisms, or least hearts, whose synchronous systole and diastole make the life of the universe, perpetually receiving and transmitting energy from an inexhaustible source.

Frank Washington Very

Among the innumerable celestial objects that may be seen through a telescope, the most beautiful of all is perhaps the planet Saturn. When viewed in the evening twilight while the sky is still bright, the yellow gold ball and its unbelievable rings shimmer in a brilliant blue medium, more like a rare work of art than a natural phenomenon.

Fred Lawrence Whipple

From the stars has come the matter of our world and of our bodies, and it is to the stars that we will someday return.

T. A. Heppenheimer

The discovery of unknown laws and principles, as well as the explanation of phenomena by laws already known, is one of its [astrophysics] most important objects.

James Edward Keeler

Dying visions of angels and Christ and God and heaven are confined to credibly good men. Why do not bad men have such visions? They die of all sorts of diseases; they have nervous temperaments; they even have creeds and hopes about the future which they cling to with very great tenacity; why do not they rejoice in some such glorious illusions when they go out of the world?

Enoch Fitch Burr

If a little kid ever asks you just why the sky is blue, you look him or her right in the eye and say, "It's because of quantum effects involving Rayleigh scattering combined with a lack of violet photon receptors in our retinae."

Every object in the Universe with a temperature above absolute zero radiates in the infrared, so this part of the spectrum contains a great deal of information.

The function of the scientist is to attain new truths by conquering them from the limitless realm of the unknown, and whether they be brilliant or otherwise, none is too small or insignificant in aspect to deserve his earnest search or joyful welcome.

Benjamin Apthorp Gould

So clear and sparkling is this autumn night that, with averted vision, I can see quite readily the wraithlike wisps of nebulosity that festoon and enmesh this entire little cluster.

Counting stars is not unlike counting people or sheep or pebbles on the seashore. The astronomer's difficulties are not in the counting, but rather in knowing when the counting must start and stop.

Frederick Hanley Seares

The face of the sun is not without expression, but it tells us precious little of what is in its heart.

Armin Joseph Deutsch

I have long believed that an experimentalist should not be unduely inhibited by theoretical untidyness. If he insists in having every last theoretical T crossed before he starts his research the chances are that he will never do a significant experiment. And the more significant and fundamental the experiment the more theoretical uncertainty may be tolerated. By contrast, the more important and difficult the experiment the more that experimental care is warranted. There is no point in attempting a half-hearted experiment with an inadequate apparatus.

Robert H. Dicke

Put bluntly yet magnanimously, the scenario of cosmic evolution grants us unparalled "big thinking," from which may well emerge the global ethics and planetary citizenship likely needed if our species is to remain part of that same cosmic evolutionary scenario.

If my impressions are correct, our educational planing mill cuts down all the knots of genius, and reduces the best of the men who go through it to much the same standard.

… one of the most detrimental (and least discussed) effects of the crisis in science education in the world today is that we are creating a population increasingly unable to think skeptically about a wide range of issues.