Astronomer Quotes

Johannes Kepler

Tycho Brahe

William Herschel

Edwin Hubble

Philip Melanchthon

Alfonso X of Castile

Fred Hoyle

Telescope, instrument of much knowledge, more precious than any scepter! Is not he who holds thee in his hand made king and lord of the works of God?

Johannes Kepler

What! the girl I adore by another embraced?
What! the balm of her breath shall another man taste?
What! pressed in the dance by another's man's knee?
What! panting recline on another than me?
Sir, she's yours; you have pressed from the grape its fine blue,
From the rosebud you've shaken the tremulous dew;
What you've touched you may take. Pretty waltzer—adieu!

Henry Englefield

In fabricating new constellations, puerility and meanness aided blind zeal in ransacking the heavens for amorphotae, or unformed stars, wherewith to wheedle accidental rulers of the hour, by exalting them and a heterogeneous assemblage of modern implements, among the heroes and classical symbols of remote ages.

William Henry Smyth

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

I have searched through the heavens, and nowhere have I found a trace of God.

Jérôme Lalande

A theory can never be proven absolutely true, therefore there is no end to scientific endeavor. A true scientific theory is always open to be disproved, and the burden of proof is continually placed on the scientist.

Kristine Larsen

Self-study, in a sense of learning by yourself without anybody teaching you anything, has an enormous value.

We do not know the truth. But sometimes we get a glimpse of the shadow of the truth. And where there is a shadow, somewhere there must be light.

Eric Mervyn Lindsay

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.

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

Christopher McKee

When we gaze at the starlit heavens, and admire the silvery radiance of the Milky Way, we would fain believe that there is absolute silence and rest, a perfect haven of repose.

To save my soul I can't believe in the canals as Schiaparelli draws them.... I verily believe... that the canals as depicted by Schiaparelli are a fallacy and that they will be so proved before many oppositions are past.

Edward Emerson Barnard

… 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.

A scientist works largely by intuition. Given enough experience, a scientist examining a problem can leap to an intuition as to what the solution 'should look like.'... Science is ultimately based on insight, not logic.

Guy Consolmagno

The orbital analysis leads, therefore, to a perturbing mass of only 1.6 times the mass of Jupiter. We shall interpret this result as a companion of Barnard's star, which therefore appears to be a planet.

Peter van de Kamp

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

Astronomy differs from most sciences in that we cannot do experiments; the astronomer must build up from his existing observations a picture or "model" of the Universe, and then look for further effects which should be observable if his model is correct.

To look into space is to look back into time, and telescopes are time machines we can ride nearly all the way back to creation itself.

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

All nature is one, but for convenience of classification we have divided our knowledge into a number of sciences which we usually regard as quite distinct from each other.

William Harkness

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

We live in an era when it seems legitimate to try everything conceivable within the known laws of physics, particularly in the absence of data.

Geoffrey Burbidge

Moreover, I desire that with the plan of the wise rulers and with their authority, pious and learned men at some time be called together both from our own churches and the churches of other nations in order that there might be a deliberation about all these controversies, and that one consenting form of doctrine, true and clear and without any ambiguity, might be handed down to posterity.

Philip Melanchthon

His knees should bend and his neck should curl, His back should twist and his face should scowl, One eye should squint and the other protrude, And this should be his customary attitude.

Thus, the very chance and randomness that prevent man from predicting the future are the tools that nature uses to insure not only the emergence of life in each expansion cycle of the universe but also the approach to perfection and complete harmony as more and complex forms of life evolve.