«Astronomy»

Astronomy is useful because it raises us above ourselves; it is useful because it is grand. It shows us how small is man’s body, how great his mind, since his intelligence can embrace the whole of this dazzling immensity, where his body is only an obscure point, and enjoy its silent harmony.

Henri Poincare

By means of microscopic observation and astronomical projection the lotus flower can become the foundation for an entire theory of the universe and an agent whereby we may perceive Truth.

Yukio Mishima

O how loud It calls devotion! genuine growth of night! Devotion! daughter of Astronomy! As undevout Astronomer is mad.

Edward Young

Astronomy compels the soul to look upwards and leads us from this world to another.

Plato

Theories crumble, but good observations never fade.

Harlow Shapey

The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons.

Edwin Powell Hubble

Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is.

Georg C. Lichtenberg

If there is anything that can bind the heavenly mind of man to this dreary exile of our earthly home and can reconcile us with our fate so that one can enjoy living, then it is verily the enjoyment of the mathematical sciences and astronomy.

Johannes Kepler

Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion.

Horace Mann

It’s amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time.

Alex Filippenko

Do there exist many worlds, or is there but a single world? This is one of the most noble and exalted questions in the study of Nature.

Albertus Magnus, c. 13th Century

The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.

Anaxagoras, 459 BCE

Astronomy is the science of the harmony of infinite expanse.

Lord John Russell

These earthly godfathers of heaven’s light,

That give a name to every fixed star,

Have no more profit of their shining nights

Than those that walk and wot not what they are.

William Shakespeare

A time will come when men will stretch out their eyes. They should see planets like our Earth.

Christopher Wren

The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects. This is the discipline that deals with the universe’s divine revolutions, the stars’ motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings … for what is more beautiful than heaven?

Nicolaus Copernicus