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Who said: “Every body perseveres in its state of being at rest or of moving uniformly straight forward, except insofar as it is compelled to change its state by forces impressed.”
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Home > Category Index for Science Quotations > Category Index M > Category: Moon

Moon Quotes (252 quotes)

... finding that in [the Moon] there is a provision of light and heat; also in appearance, a soil proper for habitation fully as good as ours, if not perhaps better who can say that it is not extremely probable, nay beyond doubt, that there must be inhabitants on the Moon of some kind or other?
Letter to Astronomer Royal, Nevil Maskelyne (1780). Quoted in Patrick Moore, Patrick Moore on the Moon (2006), 144.
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…I distinguish two parts of it, which I call respectively the brighter and the darker. The brighter seems to surround and pervade the whole hemisphere; but the darker part, like a sort of cloud, discolours the Moon’s surface and makes it appear covered with spots. Now these spots, as they are somewhat dark and of considerable size, are plain to everyone and every age has seen them, wherefore I will call them great or ancient spots, to distinguish them from other spots, smaller in size, but so thickly scattered that they sprinkle the whole surface of the Moon, but especially the brighter portion of it. These spots have never been observed by anyone before me; and from my observations of them, often repeated, I have been led to the opinion which I have expressed, namely, that I feel sure that the surface of the Moon is not perfectly smooth, free from inequalities and exactly spherical… but that, on the contrary, it is full of inequalities, uneven, full of hollows and protuberances, just like the surface of the Earth itself, which is varied everywhere by lofty mountains and deep valleys.
Describing his pioneering telescope observations of the Moon made from Jan 1610. In The Starry Messenger (Mar 1610). Quoted in Patrick Moore, Patrick Moore on the Moon (2006), 56.
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...the scientific cast of mind examines the world critically, as if many alternative worlds might exist, as if other things might be here which are not. Then we are forced to ask why what we see is present and not something else. Why are the Sun and moon and the planets spheres? Why not pyramids, or cubes, or dodecahedra? Why not irregular, jumbly shapes? Why so symmetrical, worlds? If you spend any time spinning hypotheses, checking to see whether they make sense, whether they conform to what else we know. Thinking of tests you can pose to substantiate or deflate hypotheses, you will find yourself doing science.
…...
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’Tis the witching hour of night,
Orbed is the moon and bright.
And the stars they glisten, glisten,
Seeming with bright eyes to listen-
For what listen they?
From poem 'Prophecy', collected in The Complete Works of John Keats (1818). Vol. 2, 239.
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“Of course they answer to their names?” the Gnat remarked carelessly.
“I never knew them to do it,” [said Alice.]
“What’s the use of them having names,” said the Gnat, “if they won’t answer to them?”
“No use to them,” said Alice; “but it’s useful to the people that name them, I suppose.”
In Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871, 1897), 55.
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[Apollo 7 was] an expedition of the mind, not of the heart.
Quoted by Don E. Wilhelms in To a Rocky Moon: a Geologist's Lunar Exploration (1993), 336.
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[Decoding the human genome sequence] is the most significant undertaking that we have mounted so far in an organized way in all of science. I believe that reading our blueprints, cataloguing our own instruction book, will be judged by history as more significant than even splitting the atom or going to the moon.
Interview (23 May 1998), 'Cracking the Code to Life', Academy of Achievement web site.
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[On the first moon landing:] It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don’t care.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
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[P]olitical and social and scientific values … should be correlated in some relation of movement that could be expressed in mathematics, nor did one care in the least that all the world said it could not be done, or that one knew not enough mathematics even to figure a formula beyond the schoolboy s=(1/2)gt2. If Kepler and Newton could take liberties with the sun and moon, an obscure person ... could take liberties with Congress, and venture to multiply its attraction into the square of its time. He had only to find a value, even infinitesimal, for its attraction.
The Education of Henry Adams: An Autobiography? (1918), 376.
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[Thomas Henry] Huxley, I believe, was the greatest Englishman of the Nineteenth Century—perhaps the greatest Englishman of all time. When one thinks of him, one thinks inevitably of such men as Goethe and Aristotle. For in him there was that rich, incomparable blend of intelligence and character, of colossal knowledge and high adventurousness, of instinctive honesty and indomitable courage which appears in mankind only once in a blue moon. There have been far greater scientists, even in England, but there has never been a scientist who was a greater man.
'Thomas Henry Huxley.' In the Baltimore Evening Sun (4 May 1925). Reprinted in A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit (2006), 157.
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[Of the Laputans:] They have likewise discovered two lesser stars, or satellites, which revolve about Mars, whereof the innermost is distant from the centre of the primary planet exactly three of his diameters, and the outermost five; the former revolves in the space of ten hours, and the latter in twenty one and a half.
Gulliver's Travels (1726, Penguin ed. 1967), Part III, Chap. 3, 213.
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~~[False attribution]~~ For years politicians have promised the moon. I'm the first one to be able to deliver it.
Widely seen, purportedly from a telephone message to the astronauts on the moon (20 Jul 1969). However, by checking the actual recording of the message, it is easily proved that Nixon did NOT say this on that occasion.
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A Frenchman who arrives in London, will find Philosophy, like every Thing else, very much chang’d there. He had left the World a plenum, and he now finds it a vacuum. At Paris the Universe is seen, compos’d of Vortices of subtile Matter; but nothing like it is seen in London. In France, ‘tis the Pressure of the Moon that causes the Tides; but in England ‘tis the Sea that gravitates towards the Moon; so what when you think that the Moon should make it flood with us, those Gentlemen fancy it should be Ebb, which, very unluckily, cannot be prov’d. For to be able to do this, ‘tis necessary the Moon and the Tides should have been enquir’d into, at the very instant of the Creation.
Letter XIV. 'On DesCartes and Sir Isaac Newton', in Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733), 109-110.
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A lodestone is a wonderful thing in very many experiments, and like living things. And one of its remarkable virtues in that which the ancients considered to be a living soul in the sky, in the globes and in the stars, in the sun and in the moon.
In De Magnete. Cited in Gerrit L. Verschuur, Hidden Attraction (1996), 19.
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A map of the moon... should be in every geological lecture room; for no where can we have a more complete or more magnificent illustration of volcanic operations. Our sublimest volcanoes would rank among the smaller lunar eminences; and our Etnas are but spitting furnaces.
'On the Volcanoes of the Moon', American Journal of Science, 1846, 2 (2nd Series), 347.
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A slave world is not worth preserving. Better be lifeless like the cold moon, or primitively vegetal like desolate Mars, than be a planet populated by social robots.
From speech (Oct 1947), 'Peace or Pieces: or Who Amends the Golden Rule'. As reprinted in Henry Goddard Leach (ed.), The American-Scandinavian Review (1950), 37-38, 34. As quoted in 'Dr. Harlow Shapley Dies at 86; Dean of American Astronomers', New York Times (21 Oct 1972), 69.
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According to the Boshongo people of central Africa, in the beginning, there was only darkness, water, and the great god Bumba. One day Bumba, in pain from a stomach ache, vomited up the sun. The sun dried up some of the water, leaving land. Still in pain, Bumba vomited up the moon, the stars, and then some animals. The leopard, the crocodile, the turtle, and finally, man. This creation myth, like many others, tries to answer the questions we all ask. Why are we here? Where did we come from?
Lecture (1987), 'The Origin of the Universe', collected in Black Holes And Baby Universes And Other Essays (1993), 99.
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All of us Hellenes tell lies … about those great Gods, the Sun and the Moon… . We say that they, and diverse other stars, do not keep the same path, and we call them planets or wanderers. … Each of them moves in the same path-not in many paths, but in one only, which is circular, and the varieties are only apparent.
Plato
In Plato and B. Jowett (trans.), The Dialogues of Plato: Laws (3rd ed., 1892), Vol. 5, 204-205.
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And from my pillow, looking forth by light
Of moon or favouring stars, I could behold
The antechapel where the statue stood
Of Newton with his prism and silent face,
The marble index of a mind for ever
Voyaging through strange seas of Thought, alone.
'Residence at Cambridge', The Prelude, or, Growth of a Poet's Mind: An Autobiographical Poem (1850), Book 3, 57-58.
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And God made two great lights, great for their use
To man, the greater to have rule by day, The less by night…
Paradise Lost: A poem, in Twelve Books (1750), Book 7, 36-37.
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And teach me how
To name the bigger light, and how the less,
That burn by day and night …
The Tempest, Act 1, Scene 2. In Carl Sagan, Broca's Brain (1986), 188.
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Are the humanistic and scientific approaches different? Scientists can calculate the torsion of a skyscraper at the wing-beat of a bird, or 155 motions of the Moon and 500 smaller ones in addition. They move in academic garb and sing logarithms. They say, “The sky is ours”, like priests in charge of heaven. We poor humanists cannot even think clearly, or write a sentence without a blunder, commoners of “common sense”. We never take a step without stumbling; they move solemnly, ever unerringly, never a step back, and carry bell, book, and candle.
Quoting himself in Stargazers and Gravediggers: Memoirs to Worlds in Collision (2012), 212.
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As he sat alone in a garden, he [Isaac Newton in 1666, age 24] fell into a speculation on the power of gravity; that as this power is not found sensibly diminished at the remotest distance from the centre of the earth to which we can rise, neither at the tops of the loftiest buildings, nor even on the summits of the highest mountains, it appeared to him reasonable to conclude that this power must extend much further than was usually thought: why not as high as the moon? said he to himself; and if so, her motion must be influenced by it; perhaps she is retained in her orbit thereby.
View of Newton's Philosophy (1728), preface. In William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences (1847), Vol. 2, 166. Pemberton's narrative is based on firsthand conversations with Newton himself.
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As night approaches,
Moon shines upon.
Like a baby it sleeps,
With starry blanket on.
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As soon … as it was observed that the stars retained their relative places, that the times of their rising and setting varied with the seasons, that sun, moon, and planets moved among them in a plane, … then a new order of things began.… Science had begun, and the first triumph of it was the power of foretelling the future; eclipses were perceived to recur in cycles of nineteen years, and philosophers were able to say when an eclipse was to be looked for. The periods of the planets were determined. Theories were invented to account for their eccentricities; and, false as those theories might be, the position of the planets could be calculated with moderate certainty by them.
Lecture delivered to the Royal Institution (5 Feb 1864), 'On the Science of History'. Collected in Notices of the Proceedings at the Meetings of the Members of the Royal Institution of Great Britain with Abstracts of the Discourses (1866), Vol. 4, 187.
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As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the moon and Jupiter]… Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse.
(1610) As translated by Edward Rosen in Kepler’s Conversation with Galileo’s Sidereal Messenger (1965), 39.
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As soon as the art of Flying is Found out, some of their Nation will make one of the first Colonies, that shall Transplant into that other World.
In A Discovery of a New World, Or, a Discourse: Tending to Prove, that 'tis Probable There May Be Another Habitable World in the Moon (1638, 1684), 159.
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As to the position of the earth, then, this is the view which some advance, and the views advanced concerning its rest or motion are similar. For here too there is no general agreement. All who deny that the earth lies at the centre think that it revolves about the centre, and not the earth only but, as we said before, the counter-earth as well. Some of them even consider it possible that there are several bodies so moving, which are invisible to us owing to the interposition of the earth. This, they say, accounts for the fact that eclipses of the moon are more frequent than eclipses of the sun; for in addition to the earth each of these moving bodies can obstruct it.
Aristotle
On the Heavens, 293b, 15-25. In Jonathan Barnes (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (1984), Vol. 1, 483.
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As to what Simplicius said last, that to contend whether the parts of the Sun, Moon, or other celestial body, separated from their whole, should naturally return to it, is a vanity, for that the case is impossible, it being clear by the demonstrations of Aristotle that the celestial bodies are impassible, impenetrable, unpartable, etc., I answer that none of the conditions whereby Aristotle distinguishes the celestial bodies from the elementary has any foundation other than what he deduces from the diversity of their natural motions; so that, if it is denied that the circular motion is peculiar to celestial bodies, and affirmed instead that it is agreeable to all naturally moveable bodies, one is led by necessary confidence to say either that the attributes of generated or ungenerated, alterable or unalterable, partable or unpartable, etc., equally and commonly apply to all bodies, as well to the celestial as to the elementary, or that Aristotle has badly and erroneously deduced those from the circular motion which he has assigned to celestial bodies.
Dialogue on the Great World Systems (1632). Revised and Annotated by Giorgio De Santillana (1953), 45.
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As true as steel, as plantage to the moon,
As sun to day, at turtle to her mate,
As iron to adamant, as earth to centre.
Character Troilus speaking to Cressida, in play Troilus and Cressida (c.1601), Act 3, lines 352-354. In Troilus and Cressida (1811), 72.
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Astronomers = Moon Starers = No More Stars
Anagram
From 'The Anagram Hall of Fame' on the wordsmith.org website.
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Astronomy affords the most extensive example of the connection of physical sciences. In it are combined the sciences of number and quantity, or rest and motion. In it we perceive the operation of a force which is mixed up with everything that exists in the heavens or on earth; which pervades every atom, rules the motion of animate and inanimate beings, and is a sensible in the descent of the rain-drop as in the falls of Niagara; in the weight of the air, as in the periods of the moon.
On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences (1858), 1.
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Astronomy was thus the cradle of the natural sciences and the starting point of geometrical theories. The stars themselves gave rise to the concept of a ‘point’; triangles, quadrangles and other geometrical figures appeared in the constellations; the circle was realized by the disc of the sun and the moon. Thus in an essentially intuitive fashion the elements of geometrical thinking came into existence.
In George Edward Martin, The Foundations of Geometry and the Non-Euclidean Plane (1982), 72.
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At the origin, the [space travel] pioneers of the greatest adventure of all times were motivated by the drive to explore, by the pure spirit of conquest, by the lofty desire to open up new fields to human genius. … From their exceptional journeys, they all came back with the revelation of beauty. Beauty of the black sky, beauty and variety of our planet, beauty of the Earth seen from the Moon, girdled by a scintillating belt of equatorial thunderstorms. They all emphasize that our planet is one, that borderlines are artificial, that humankind is one single community on board spaceship Earth. They all insist that this fragile gem is at our mercy and that we must all endeavor to protect it.
Written for 'Foreword' to Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988), paragraphs 6-7 (unpaginated).
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But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
From Address at Rice Stadium (12 Sep 1962). On website of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. [This go-to-the-moon speech was largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen.]
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By death the moon was gathered in Long ago, ah long ago;
Yet still the silver corpse must spin
And with another's light must glow.
Her frozen mountains must forget
Their primal hot volcanic breath,
Doomed to revolve for ages yet,
Void amphitheatres of death.
And all about the cosmic sky,
The black that lies beyond our blue,
Dead stars innumerable lie,
And stars of red and angry hue
Not dead but doomed to die.
'Cosmic Death' (1923), in The Captive Shrew and Other Poems of a Biologist (1932), 30.
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By night the Glass
Of Galileo … observes
Imagin’d Land and Regions in the Moon.
Paradise Lost, Book 5, lines 261-263. In Books V and VI, edited by A. W. Verity,(1910), 11.
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Clouds are like boogers hanging on the nostrils of the moon.
Excerpt on PBS TV show Make 'Em Laugh: The Funny Business of America, Episode 1, 'Would Ya Hit a Guy With Glasses? Nerds, Jerks and Oddballs', (15 Jan 2009).
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Counting stars by candlelight all are dim but one is bright; the spiral light of Venus rising first and shining best, from the northwest corner of a brand-new crescent moon crickets and cicadas sing a rare and different tune.
Terrapin Station
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Did Newton, dreaming in his orchard there
Beside the dreaming Witham, see the moon
Burn like a huge gold apple in the boughs
And wonder why should moons not fall like fruit?
In Watchers of the Sky (1922), 193-194.
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Even though I didn't make it to the moon, my machines did.
As quoted in Myrna Oliver, 'Obituary: Albert Hibbs, 78; JPL Scientist, Voice of Unmanned Missions', Los Angeles Times (27 Feb 2003) repeating the statement previously published in 2001. Hibbs referred to the Ranger and Surveyor spacecrafts for which he was a systems designer. He had passed physical and psychological testing as a candidate to be an astronaut, but the Apollo moon-landing program was canceled before he was placed for a flight.
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Evidence of this [transformation of animals into fossils] is that parts of aquatic animals and perhaps of naval gear are found in rock in hollows on mountains, which water no doubt deposited there enveloped in sticky mud, and which were prevented by coldness and dryness of the stone from petrifying completely. Very striking evidence of this kind is found in the stones of Paris, in which one very often meets round shells the shape of the moon.
De Causis Proprietatum Elementorum (On the Causes of the Properties of the Elements) [before 1280], Book II, tract 3, chapter 5, quoted in A. C. Crombie, Augustine to Galileo (1959), Vol. 1, 126.
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Examine Venus and the Moon
Who stole a thimble or a spoon.
From poem 'Hudibras' (1684), Line 591. In Hudibras: In Three Parts, Written in the Time of the Late Wars (1806), 119.
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Exits sun; enters moon.
This moon is never alone.
Stars are seen all around.
These twinklers do not make a sound.
The tiny ones shine from their place.
Mother moon watches with a smiling face.
Its light is soothing to the eyes.
Night’s darkness hides its face.
Cool and calm is its light.
Heat and sweat are never felt.
Some days, moon is not seen.
Makes kids wonder, where had it been?
Partial eclipse shades the moon.
In summers it does not arrive soon.
Beautiful is this milky ball.
It is the love of one and all.
…...
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Few people doubt that the Apollo missions to the Moon as well as the precursory Mercury and Gemini missions not only had a valuable role for the United States in its Cold War with the Soviet Union but also lifted the spirits of humankind. In addition, the returned samples of lunar surface material fueled important scientific discoveries.
In 'Is Human Spaceflight Obsolete?', Issues in Science and Technology (Summer 2004).
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For all these years you were merely
A smear of light through our telescopes
On the clearest, coldest night; a hint
Of a glint, just a few pixels wide
On even your most perfectly-framed portraits.
But now, now we see you!
Swimming out of the dark - a great
Stone shark, your star-tanned skin pitted
And pocked, scarred after eons of drifting
Silently through the endless ocean of space.
Here on Earth our faces lit up as we saw
You clearly for the first time; eyes wide
With wonder we traced the strangely familiar
Grooves raked across your sides,
Wondering if Rosetta had doubled back to Mars
And raced past Phobos by mistake –
Then you were gone, falling back into the black,
Not to be seen by human eyes again for a thousand
Blue Moons or more. But we know you now,
We know you; you’ll never be just a speck of light again.
…...
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For forty-nine months between 1968 and 1972, two dozen Americans had the great good fortune to briefly visit the Moon. Half of us became the first emissaries from Earth to tread its dusty surface. We who did so were privileged to represent the hopes and dreams of all humanity. For mankind it was a giant leap for a species that evolved from the Stone Age to create sophisticated rockets and spacecraft that made a Moon landing possible. For one crowning moment, we were creatures of the cosmic ocean, an epoch that a thousand years hence may be seen as the signature of our century.
…...
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For FRICTION is inevitable because the Universe is FULL of God's works.
For the PERPETUAL MOTION is in all works of Almighty GOD.
For it is not so in the engines of man, which are made of dead materials, neither indeed can be.
For the Moment of bodies, as it is used, is a false term—bless God ye Speakers on the Fifth of November.
For Time and Weight are by their several estimates.
For I bless GOD in the discovery of the LONGITUDE direct by the means of GLADWICK.
For the motion of the PENDULUM is the longest in that it parries resistance.
For the WEDDING GARMENTS of all men are prepared in the SUN against the day of acceptation.
For the wedding Garments of all women are prepared in the MOON against the day of their purification.
For CHASTITY is the key of knowledge as in Esdras, Sir Isaac Newton & now, God be praised, in me.
For Newton nevertheless is more of error than of the truth, but I am of the WORD of GOD.
From 'Jubilate Agno' (c.1758-1763), in N. Callan (ed.), The Collected Poems of Christopher Smart (1949), Vol. 1, 276.
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For it is owing to their wonder that men now both begin and at first began to philosophize; they wondered originally at the obvious difficulties, then advanced little by little and stated difficulties about the greater matters, e.g. about the phenomena of the moon and those of the sun and the stars, and about the genesis of the universe. And a man who is puzzled and wonders thinks himself ignorant (whence even the lover of myth is in a sense a lover of wisdom, for myth is composed of wonders); therefore since they philosophized in order to escape from ignorance, evidently they were pursuing science in order to know, and not for any utilitarian end. And this is confirmed by the facts; for it was when almost all the necessities of life and the things that make for comfort and recreation were present, that such knowledge began to be sought. Evidently then we do not seek it for the sake of any advantage; but as the man is free, we say, who exists for himself and not for another, so we pursue this as the only free science, for it alone exists for itself.
Aristotle
Metaphysics, 982b, 12-27. In Jonathan Baines (ed.), The Complete Works of Aristotle (1984), Vol. 2, 1554.
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For when I look at the moon I do not see a hostile, empty world. I see … a radiant body where man has taken his first steps into an endless frontier.
In David Scott and ‎Alexei Leonov, Two Sides of the Moon: Our Story of the Cold War Space Race (2004), 390.
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Frequently on the lunar surface I said to myself, “This is the Moon, that is the Earth. I’m really here, I’m really here!”
Apollo 12
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From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.
…...
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From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn’t a miracle, we just decided to go.
…...
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From the rocket we can see the huge sphere of the planet in one or another phase of the Moon. We can see how the sphere rotates, and how within a few hours it shows all its sides successively ... and we shall observe various points on the surface of the Earth for several minutes and from different sides very closely. This picture is so majestic, attractive and infinitely varied that I wish with all my soul that you and I could see it. (1911)
As translated in William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth (2007), 147. From Tsiolkovsky's 'The Investigation of Universal Space by Means of Reactive Devices', translated in K.E. Tsiolkovsky, Works on Rocket Technology (NASA, NASATT F-243, n.d.), 76-77.
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He … thought the moon was made of green cheese.
From the original French, in Gargantua et Pantagruel, Book 1, (1534) as translated by Thomas Urquhart, Master François Rabelais: Five Books of the Lives, Heroic Deeds, and Sayings of Gargantua and His Son Pantagruel (1653, 1904), Vol 1, Book 1, Chap 11, 40.
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He made an instrument to know If the moon shine at full or no;
That would, as soon as e’er she shone straight,
Whether ‘twere day or night demonstrate;
Tell what her d’ameter to an inch is,
And prove that she’s not made of green cheese.
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He scarce had ceased when the superior fiend
Was moving toward the shore; his ponderous shield
Ethereal temper, massy, large and round,
Behind him cast; the broad circumference
Hung on his shoulders like the moon, whose orb
Through optic glass the Tuscan artist views
At evening from the top of Fésolè,
Or in Valdarno, to descry new lands,
Rivers or mountains in her spotty globe.
Paradise Lost, Books I and II (1667), edited by Anna Baldwin (1998), lines 283-91, p. 9.
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He that knows the secrets of nature with Albertus Magnus, or the motions of the heavens with Galileo, or the cosmography of the moon with Hevelius, or the body of man with Galen, or the nature of diseases with Hippocrates, or the harmonies in melody with Orpheus, or of poesy with Homer, or of grammar with Lilly, or of whatever else with the greatest artist; he is nothing if he knows them merely for talk or idle speculation, or transient and external use. But he that knows them for value, and knows them his own, shall profit infinitely.
In Bertram Doben (ed.), Centuries of Meditations (1908), The Third Century, No. 41, 189-190.
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He who ascribes the movement of the seas to the movement of the earth assumes a purely forced movement; but he who lets the seas follow the moon makes this movement in a certain way a natural one.
As quoted in James Bruce Ross and Mary Martin McLaughlin, The Portable Renaissance Reader (1968), 603.
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Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.
Plaque left on the moon, 20 Jul 1969.
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Hipparchus displayed his love of truth in confining to the sun and moon his demonstration of circular and uniform motions, and in not extending them to the five planets. Inasmuch as his predecessors had not left him a sufficient number of accurate observations, he judged rightly, with reference to the planets, in attempting nothing beyond a collection of good observations for the use of his successors, and a demonstration, by means of these observations, that the hypotheses of the mathematicians of his time did not agree with the phenomena.
Ptolemy
Translated from Syntaxis, ix, 2. As quoted and cited in George Cornewall Lewis, An Historical Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients (1862), 214.
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His [Sherlock Holmes] ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. … he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. … “But the Solar System!" I protested. “What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”
In 'The Science Of Deduction', A Study In Scarlet (1887, 1904), 15-16.
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Hogwash! … On our way to the moon, and on the moon, I worked as hard as John Young and it took me another six years before I found out the truth about God. In the days of Apollo and long afterwards I still believed in the theory of evolution and rejected the Biblical creation story. [Commenting on an American reporter’s printed intimation that Lunar Module pilots “had less things to do and had time to look out the spaceship’s window, or to explore the surroundings. Afterwards they could not cope with what they had seen, felt and experienced.”]
As quoted in Colin Burgess, Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (2010), 422. Burgess introduced the quote with: “Charles Moss Duke Jr. has always been wrongly labeled as the astronaut who found God during his Apollo 16 mission, but even though he did eventually become a born-again Christian, this life-altering epiphany came some years after the event.” Burgess explained that Duke dislikes “misinformed characterizations of himself and his Apollo colleagues and of the religious impact of his own lunar mission.” [The ellipsis in the subject quote spans from one paragraph to the next in Burgess’ book. The ellipsis was added by Webmaster, on the assumption that the word “Hogwash!” belongs with the statement in the following paragraph.]
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Humanity is about to learn that a lunatic (touched by the moon) is not a crazy man but one so sane, well-informed, well-coordinated, self-disciplined, cooperative and fearless as to be the first earthian human to have been ferried to a physical landing upon the moon, and thereafter to have been returned safely to reboard his mother space vehicle earth.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
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I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to earth.
Address to Joint Session of Congress, on Urgent National Needs (25 May 1961). On web site of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. Also in Vital Speeches of the Day (15 Jun 1961), Vol. 27, No. 17, 518-9.
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I conclude therefore that this star [Tycho’s supernova] is not some kind of comet or a fiery meteor, whether these be generated beneath the Moon or above the Moon, but that it is a star shining in the firmament itself—one that has never previously been seen before our time, in any age since the beginning of the world.
In De Stella Nova, as translated in Dagobert D. Runes, A Treasury of World Science (1962), 108.
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I do not see the possibility of comparison between his [H. G. Wells] work and mine. We do not proceed in the same manner. It occurs to me that his stories do not repose on a very scientific basis. ... I make use of physics. He invents. I go to the moon in a cannon-ball, discharged from a cannon. Here there is no invention. He goes to Mars in an airship, which he constructs of a metal which does not obey the law of gravitation. Ça c'est très joli ... but show me this metal. Let him produce it.
Quoted in R. H. Sherard, 'Jules Verne Re-Visited', T.P.'s Weekly (9 Oct 1903).
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I don’t know if I would call it a miracle. I would call it a spectacular example of what people can do. To me, it’s like putting the first man on the moon or splitting the atom. We’ve shown that if the right treatment is given to people who have a catastrophic injury that they could walk away from it.
Expressing optimism for further recovery for Kevin Everett, a Buffalo Bills football player who suffered a paralyzing spinal injury during a game (9 Sep 2007), but after two days of hospital treatment had begun voluntarily moving his arms and legs. Green credits as significant to the recovery was that within minutes of his injury, the patient was quickly treated with intravenous ice-cold saline solution to induce hypothermia.
Quoted in John Wawrow, 'Bills' Everett Improves, May Walk Again', Associated Press news report, Washington Post (12 Sep 2007).
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I don’t think we’ll go there [Mars] until we go back to the Moon and develop a technology base for living and working and transporting ourselves through space.
As quoted on the nmspacemuseum.org website of the New Mexico Museum of Space History.
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I find myself now preaching about the golden age of manned spaceflight, because something went on there, within us, that we’re missing. When we went to the Moon, it was not only just standing on a new plateau for all mankind. We changed the way everybody in the world thought of themselves, you know. It was a change that went on inside of us. And we’re losing that.
From interview with Ron Stone (24 May 1999) for NASA Johnson Space Center Oral History Project on NASA website.
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I fully expect that NASA will send me back to the Moon as they treated Senator [John] Glenn, and if they don’t do otherwise, why, then I’ll have to do it myself.
About looking forward to the day he turned 77. In interview with Associated Press, as quoted in Peter Bond, 'Obituary: Charles Conrad Jnr', The Independent (10 Jul 1999).
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I had made considerable advance ... in calculations on my favourite numerical lunar theory, when I discovered that, under the heavy pressure of unusual matters (two transits of Venus and some eclipses) I had committed a grievous error in the first stage of giving numerical value to my theory. My spirit in the work was broken, and I have never heartily proceeded with it since.
[Concerning his calculations on the orbital motion of the Moon.]
Private note (29 Sep 1890). In George Biddell Airy and Wilfrid Airy (ed.), Autobiography of Sir George Biddell Airy (1896), 350.
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I had no more conception of what it meant to be a forester than the man in the moon. ... But at least a forester worked in the woods and with the woods - and I loved the woods and everything about them.
Gifford's thoughts, when upon entering Yale (1885) his father asked 'How would you like to be a forester?'
In Breaking New Ground (1947, 1998), 2.
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I had rather be Mercury, the smallest among seven [planets], revolving round the sun, than the first among five [moons] revolving round Saturn.
In James Wood, Dictionary of Quotations from Ancient and Modern, English and Foreign Sources (1893), 166:23.
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I have sat by night beside a cold lake
And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water,
But the moon on this cloud sea is not human,
And here is no shore, no intimacy,
Only the start of space, the road to suns.
Trans Canada
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I have seen a thousand sunsets and sunrises, on land where it floods forest and mountains with honey coloured light, at sea where it rises and sets like a blood orange in a multicoloured nest of cloud, slipping in and out of the vast ocean. I have seen a thousand moons: harvest moons like gold coins, winter moons as white as ice chips, new moons like baby swans’ feathers.
Letter to Lee McGeorge (31 Jul 1978). Collected in Letters of Note: Volume 2: An Eclectic Collection of Correspondence (2016), 76.
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I myself consider that gravity is merely a certain natural inclination with which parts are imbued by the architect of all things for gathering themselves together into a unity and completeness by assembling into the form of a globe. It is easy to believe that the Sun, Moon and other luminaries among the wandering stars have this tendency also, so that by its agency they retain the rounded shape in which they reveal themselves, but nevertheless go round their orbits in various ways. If then the Earth also performs other motions, as for example the one about the centre, they must necessarily be like those which are similarly apparent in many external bodies in which we find an annual orbit.
'Book One. Chapter IX. Whether several motions can be attributed to the Earth, and on the centre of the universe', in Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), trans. A. M. Duncan (1976), 46.
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I pray every day and I think everybody should. I don’t think you can be up here and look out the window as I did the first day and look out at the Earth from this vantage point. We’re not so high compared to people who went to the moon and back. But to look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is, to me, impossible. It just strengthens my faith.
From NASA transcript of News Conference by downlink from Space Shuttle Discovery during its STS-95 Mission in Earth orbit (5 Nov 1998). In response to question from Paul Hoveston of USA Today asking John Glenn about how the space flight strengthened his faith and if he had any time to pray in orbit.
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I see the moon like a clipped piece of silver. Like gilded bees the stars cluster round her.
In his dialogue 'The Critic As Artist', collected in Intentions (1891), 92.
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I shall explain a System of the World differing in many particulars from any yet known, answering in all things to the common Rules of Mechanical Motions: This depends upon three Suppositions. First, That all Cœlestial Bodies whatsoever, have an attraction or gravitating power towards their own Centers, whereby they attract not only their own parts, and keep them from flying from them, as we may observe the Earth to do, but that they do also attract all the other Cœlestial bodies that are within the sphere of their activity; and consequently that not only the Sun and Moon have an influence upon the body and motion the Earth, and the Earth upon them, but that Mercury also Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter by their attractive powers, have a considerable influence upon its motion in the same manner the corresponding attractive power of the Earth hath a considerable influence upon every one of their motions also. The second supposition is this, That all bodies whatsoever that are put into a direct and simple motion, will continue to move forward in a streight line, till they are by some other effectual powers deflected and bent into a Motion, describing a Circle, Ellipse, or some other more compounded Curve Line. The third supposition is, That these attractive powers are so much the more powerful in operating, by how much the nearer the body wrought upon is to their own Centers. Now what these several degrees are I have not yet experimentally verified; but it is a notion, which if fully prosecuted as it ought to be, will mightily assist the Astronomer to reduce all the Cœlestial Motions to a certain rule, which I doubt will never be done true without it. He that understands the nature of the Circular Pendulum and Circular Motion, will easily understand the whole ground of this Principle, and will know where to find direction in Nature for the true stating thereof. This I only hint at present to such as have ability and opportunity of prosecuting this Inquiry, and are not wanting of Industry for observing and calculating, wishing heartily such may be found, having myself many other things in hand which I would first compleat and therefore cannot so well attend it. But this I durst promise the Undertaker, that he will find all the Great Motions of the World to be influenced by this Principle, and that the true understanding thereof will be the true perfection of Astronomy.
An Attempt to Prove the Motion of the Earth from Observations (1674), 27-8. Based on a Cutlerian Lecture delivered by Hooke at the Royal Society four years earlier.
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I think that a particle must have a separate reality independent of the measurements. That is an electron has spin, location and so forth even when it is not being measured. I like to think that the moon is there even if I am not looking at it.
…...
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I walked on the moon, but walking with God is a lot more exciting.
Reflecting on becoming a born-again Christian (some years after his return from the Moon). As quoted in Colin Burgess, Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (2010), 423.
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I Was strolling on the Moon one day.
In the merry, merry month of December … May … May. That’s right. … When much to my surprise, a pair of bonny eyes … be-doop-doo-doo …
Singing while on an extravehicular walk on the moon’s surface (Apollo 17, 12 Dec 1972). With him was Eugene Cernan and joining in singing the second line, and corrected with “May” during the first ellipsis above. From transcript on the nasa.gov website, which notes the song being mimicked was 'While Strolling through the Park One Day' written by Ed Haley (1884).
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I wish, my dear Kepler, that we could have a good laugh together at the extraordinary stupidity of the mob. What do you think of the foremost philosophers of this University? In spite of my oft-repeated efforts and invitations, they have refused, with the obstinacy of a glutted adder, to look at the planets or the Moon or my glass [telescope].
Opere ed Nas. X, 423. As cited in Alan Mackay, A Dictionary of Scientific Quotations (1991), 99. Galileo wished others to use his telescope to see for themselves the moons of Jupiter which he had himself first seen in Jan 1610. If you have a primary source for this letter giving the date it was written, please contact Webmaster.
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I wol yow telle, as was me taught also,
The foure spirites and the bodies sevene,
By ordre, as ofte I herde my lord hem nevene.
The firste spirit quiksilver called is,
The second orpiment, the thridde, ywis,
Sal armoniak, and the firthe brimstoon.
The bodies sevene eek, lo! hem heer anoon:
Sol gold is, and Luna silver we threpe,
Mars yron, Mercurie quiksilver we clepe,
Saturnus leed, and Jupiter is tin,
And Venus coper, by my fader kin!
The Canon's Yeoman's Tale, lines 819-29. In Larry D. Benson (ed.), The Riverside Chaucer (1988), 273.
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I would liken science and poetry in their natural independence to those binary stars, often different in colour, which Herschel’s telescope discovered to revolve round each other. “There is one light of the sun,” says St. Paul, “and another of the moon, and another of the stars: star differeth from star in glory.” It is so here. That star or sun, for it is both, with its cold, clear, white light, is SCIENCE: that other, with its gorgeous and ever-shifting hues and magnificent blaze, is POETRY. They revolve lovingly round each other in orbits of their own, pouring forth and drinking in the rays which they exchange; and they both also move round and shine towards that centre from which they came, even the throne of Him who is the Source of all truth and the Cause of all beauty.
'The Alleged Antagonism between Poetry and Chemistry.' In Jesse Aitken Wilson, Memoirs of George Wilson. Quoted in Natural History Society of Montreal, 'Reviews and Notices of Books,' The Canadian Naturalist and Geologist (1861) Vol. 6, 393.
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I'm convinced that before the year 2000 is over, the first child will have been born on the moon.
Taped TV interview, broadcast on WMAL, Washington, (7 Jan 1972), as reported in 'Birth of Child on Moon Foreseen by von Braun', New York Times (7 Jan 1972), 14.
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I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
Address to US Congress, 1975. Science and Technology Committee, United States Congress, House, Future Space Programs, 1975, Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Space Science and Applications (1975), 206. Also in Arthur C. ClarkeThe View from Serendip (1977), 238.
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If God wanted man to become a space faring species, He would have given man a moon.
…...
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If in some madhouse there is a lunatic who still believes the old churchly tenet that heaven is up above, even this [the first manned landing on the moon] probably will not disabuse him. Surely those of us still sane enough to be at large realize that this event will have no more to so with theology, God, or self-knowledge than any flower we pluck or any hand we press—in fact, much less.
(13 Jul 1969). As given in Alan F. and Jason R. Pater (eds.), What They Said in 1969: The Yearbook of Spoken Opinion (1970), 402.
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If our intention had been merely to bring back a handful of soil and rocks from the lunar gravel pit and then forget the whole thing, we would certainly be history's biggest fools. But that is not our intention now—it never will be. What we are seeking in tomorrow's [Apollo 11] trip is indeed that key to our future on earth. We are expanding the mind of man. We are extending this God-given brain and these God-given hands to their outermost limits and in so doing all mankind will benefit. All mankind will reap the harvest…. What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.
Banquet speech on the eve of the Apollo 11 launch, Royal Oaks Country Club, Titusville (15 Jul 1969). In "Of a Fire on the Moon", Life (29 Aug 1969), 67, No. 9, 34.
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If somebody’d said before the flight, “Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?” I would have say, “No, no way.” But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.
…...
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If you stacked all the US currency together, you could probably reach the moon, but I bet the Apollo programme was still more economical.
In Geoff Tibballs, The Mammoth Book of Zingers, Quips, and One-Liners (2004), 502. If you know the primary source, please contact Webmaster.
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In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.”
…...
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In shades of black and blue the skies do bow as darkness falls the lights go out.
Nature softly immersed in glee as all mankind drifts off to sleep.
Water breathes a sigh of relief now aquatic creatures can do as they please.
Animals whether large or small regain the natural instincts that man has fought.
The moon shines bright he’s happy too people can’t over-ride his rules.
Midnight calms the wounds of the world the break of dawn disperses new hope...
…...
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In some sense, there’s nothing as impractical as astronomy. You could take away the whole astronomical universe, and most people wouldn’t know the difference—except for the sun and maybe the moon.
In interview, Rushworth M. Kidder, 'Grounded in Space Science', Christian Science Monitor (22 Dec 1989).
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In the beginning of the year 1665 I found the Method of approximating series & the Rule for reducing any dignity of any Bionomial into such a series. The same year in May I found the method of Tangents of Gregory & Slusius, & in November had the direct method of fluxions & the next year in January had the Theory of Colours & in May following I had entrance into ye inverse method of fluxions. And the same year I began to think of gravity extending to ye orb of the Moon & (having found out how to estimate the force with wch [a] globe revolving within a sphere presses the surface of the sphere) from Keplers rule of the periodic times of the Planets being in sesquialterate proportion of their distances from the center of their Orbs, I deduced that the forces wch keep the Planets in their Orbs must [be] reciprocally as the squares of their distances from the centers about wch they revolve: & thereby compared the force requisite to keep the Moon in her Orb with the force of gravity at the surface of the earth, & found them answer pretty nearly. All this was in the two plague years of 1665-1666. For in those days I was in the prime of my age for invention & minded Mathematicks & Philosophy more then than at any time since.
Quoted in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), 143.
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In the beginning was the book of Nature. For eon after eon, the pages of the book turned with no human to read them. No eye wondered at the ignition of the sun, the coagulation of the earth, the birth of the moon, the solidification of a terrestrial continent, or the filling of the seas. Yet when the first primitive algae evolved to float on the waters of this ocean, a promise was born—a hope that someday all the richness and variety of the phenomena of the universe would be read with appreciative eyes.
Opening paragraph in Gary G. Tibbetts, How the Great Scientists Reasoned: The Scientific Method in Action (2012), 1.
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In the infancy of physical science, it was hoped that some discovery might be made that would enable us to emancipate ourselves from the bondage of gravity, and, at least, pay a visit to our neighbour the moon. The poor attempts of the aeronaut have shewn the hopelessness of the enterprise. The success of his achievement depends on the buoyant power of the atmosphere, but the atmosphere extends only a few miles above the earth, and its action cannot reach beyond its own limits. The only machine, independent of the atmosphere, we can conceive of, would be one on the principle of the rocket. The rocket rises in the air, not from the resistance offered by the atmosphere to its fiery stream, but from the internal reaction. The velocity would, indeed, be greater in a vacuum than in the atmosphere, and could we dispense with the comfort of breathing air, we might, with such a machine, transcend the boundaries of our globe, and visit other orbs.
God's Glory in the Heavens (1862, 3rd Ed. 1867) 3-4.
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In the moonlight
While drinking homemade wine
My sorrow hung heavy
And my heart felt like lead.
The moon was golden yellow
The night soft and mellow.
There was a smell of jasmine
All around.
And I felt the weight of the world
Upon my shoulders.
I looked at the twinkling stars in the sky
So far and wide
Here’s to you
I lifted my wine
And my eyes looked upon the brilliance
Of the moon and stars
From afar...
…...
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In the year 1666 he retired again from Cambridge... to his mother in Lincolnshire & whilst he was musing in a garden it came into his thought that the power of gravity (wch brought an apple from the tree to the ground) was not limited to a certain distance from the earth but that this power must extend much farther than was usually thought. Why not as high as the moon said he to himself & if so that must influence her motion & perhaps retain her in her orbit, whereupon he fell a calculating what would be the effect of that supposition but being absent from books & taking the common estimate in use among Geographers & our seamen before Norwood had measured the earth, that 60 English miles were contained in one degree of latitude on the surface of the Earth his computation did not agree with his theory & inclined him then to entertain a notion that together with the force of gravity there might be a mixture of that force wch the moon would have if it was carried along in a vortex.
[The earliest account of Newton, gravity and an apple.]
Memorandum of a conversation with Newton in August 1726. Quoted in Richard Westfall, Never at Rest: A Biography of Isaac Newton (1980), 154.
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In the year of chan yan..., Jupiter was in [the Zodiacal Division of] Zi, it rose in the morning and went under in the evening together with the Lunar Mansions Xunu, Xu and Wei. It was very large and bright. Apparently, there was a small reddish (chi) star appended (fu) to its side. This is called “an alliance” (tong meng).
Gan De
As given in Chinese Astronomy and Astrophysics (1981), 5, 242.
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In this age of space flight, when we use the modern tools of science to advance into new regions of human activity, the Bible ... this grandiose, stirring history of the gradual revelation and unfolding of the moral law ... remains in every way an up-to-date book. Our knowledge and use of the laws of nature that enable us to fly to the Moon also enable us to destroy our home planet with the atom bomb. Science itself does not address the question whether we should use the power at our disposal for good or for evil. The guidelines of what we ought to do are furnished in the moral law of God. It is no longer enough that we pray that God may be with us on our side. We must learn again that we may be on God's side.
Quoted in Bob Phillips, Phillips' Book of Great Thoughts & Funny Sayings (1993), 42.
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Is there a God? Who knows? Is there an angry unicorn on the dark side of the moon?
In 'Philosophy, Religion, and So Forth', A Voice Crying in the Wilderness (1989), 2.
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It is a most beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the moon.
In pamphlet, The Sidereal Messenger (1610), reprinted in The Sidereal Messenger of Galileo Galilei: And a Part of the Preface to the Preface to Kepler's Dioptrics Containing the Original Account of Galileo's Astronomical Discoveries (1880), 8.
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It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun
Vitruvius
In De Architectura, Book 9, Chap 2, Sec.3. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 263.
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It is only necessary to check the comic books and Reader’s Digest to see the extent of the influence of applied science on the popular imagination. How much it is used to provide an atmosphere of endless thrill and excitement, quite apart from its accidental menace or utility, one can decide from such typical daily headlines as these:
London, March 10, 1947, Reuters: ROCKET TO MOON SEEN POSSIBLE BUT THOUSANDS TO DIE IN ATTEMPT
Cleveland, January 5, 1948.: LIFE SPAN OF 100, BE YOUNG AT 80, ATOM PREDICTION
Washington, June 11, 1947: SCIENTISTS AWAIT COW’S DEATH TO SOLVE MATHEMATICS PROBLEM
Needham Market, Suffolk, England. (U.P.): VICAR PROPOSES BABIES FOR YEARNING SPINSTERS, TEST-TUBE BABIES WILL PRODUCE ROBOTS
Washington, D.C., January 3, 1948. U.S. FLYER PASSING SONIC BARRIER OPENS NEW VISTAS OF DESTRUCTION ONE OF BRAVEST ACTS IN HISTORY
Those headlines represent “human interest” attempts to gear science to the human nervous system.
In The Mechanical Bride: Folklore of Industrial Man (1967), 93.
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It is the moon, I ken her horn
That’s blinkin in the lift sae hie;
She shines sae bright to wyle us hame,
But by my sooth she’ll wait a wee!
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It is the very error of the moon;
She comes more nearer earth than she was wont,
And makes men mad.
In Othello (1622), Act 5, Scene 2, line 109-111.
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It is with a great sense of pride as an American and with humility as a human being that I say to you today what no men have been privileged to say before: “We walked on the moon.”
In Address to Joint Session of Congress (16 Sep 1969). Printed in 'Transcript of Astronauts’ Addresses to Congress', New York Times (17 Sep 1969), 30.
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It must have appeared almost as improbable to the earlier geologists, that the laws of earthquakes should one day throw light on the origin of mountains, as it must to the first astronomers, that the fall of an apple should assist in explaining the motions of the moon.
Principles of Geology(1830-3), Vol. 3, 5.
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It’ll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter… 13 months after launch. We pass the Moon in just nine hours.
…...
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Jupiter was very large and bright. Apparently, there was a small reddish star appended to its side. This is called “an alliance.”
[Observation in summer 365 B.C., speculated to be of Ganymede.]
Gan De
In the lost book Suixing Jing (Treatise on Jupiter), quoted in the extensive compilation Kaiyuan Zhanjing, (The Kaiyuan Treatise on Astrology (compiled 718-726). As given Helaine Selin, Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures (1997), 342. It has been speculated that it was the moon Ganymede beside Jupiter, by Xi Zezong in 'The Discovery of Jupiter’s Satellite Made by Gan De 2000 years Before Galileo,' Chinese Physics (1982), 2, No. 3, 664–67.
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Knowledge and wonder are the dyad of our worthy lives as intellectual beings. Voyager did wonders for our knowledge, but performed just as mightily in the service of wonder–and the two elements are complementary, not independent or opposed. The thought fills me with awe–a mechanical contraption that could fit in the back of a pickup truck, traveling through space for twelve years, dodging around four giant bodies and their associated moons, and finally sending exquisite photos across more than four light-hours of space from the farthest planet in our solar system.
…...
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Many people are shrinking from the future and from participation in the movement toward a new, expanded reality. And, like homesick travelers abroad, they are focusing their anxieties on home. The reasons are not far to seek. We are at a turning point in human history. … We could turn our attention to the problems that going to the moon certainly will not solve … But I think this would be fatal to our future. … A society that no longer moves forward does not merely stagnate; it begins to die.
In 'Man On the Moon' (1969) collected in Margaret Mead and Robert B. Textor (ed.), The World Ahead: An Anthropologist Anticipates the Future (2005), 248. The original magazine article was written shortly before the first Moon landing for the lay public, in Redbook (Jun 1969). It was later reprinted in the Congressional Record—Senate (30 Jun 1969), 17725-17726.
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Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, “Because it is there.” Well, space is there, and we’re going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God’s blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
From Address at Rice Stadium (12 Sep 1962). On website of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. [This go-to-the-moon speech was largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen.]
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Mapping the human genome has been compared with putting a man on the moon, but I believe it is more than that. This is the outstanding achievement not only of our lifetime, but in terms of human history. A few months ago I compared the project to the invention of the wheel. On reflection, it is more than that. I can well imagine technology making the wheel obsolete. But this code is the essence of mankind, and as long as humans exists, this code is going to be important and will be used.
Quoted in the press release 'The first draft of the Book of Humankind has been read', 26 Jun 2000. On the Sanger Institute web site at www.sanger.ac.uk/HGP/draft2000/mainrelease.shtml
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Melvin Calvin was a fearless scientist, totally unafraid to venture into new fields such as hot atom chemistry, carcinogenesis, chemical evolution and the origin of life, organic geochemistry, immunochemistry, petroleum production from plants, farming, Moon rock analysis, and development of novel synthetic biomembrane models for plant photosystems.
Co-author with Andrew A. Benson, 'Melvin Calvin', Biographical Memoirs of the US National Academy of Science.
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Memories of childhood are unreliable. I am lucky to have documentary evidence dating from the age of nine. The evidence is an unfinished novel, found among my mother's papers forty-three years later, with the title Sir Phillip Roberts’ Ero-Lunar Collision. Sir Phillip is a professional astronomer, evidently a role model for a young scientist. The style of the novel is copied from Jules Verne; the story was suggested by the near approach of the asteroid Eros in the year 1931. Here is a sample of the dialogue:
“Will Eros really go right through our Sattelite?” said Major Forbes.
“Yes,” said Sir Phillip, “its speed, and its small weight and resistance, will bring it through our Sattelite, it will be a picture, suddenly rising white-hot from the Moon’s internal fires, followed by a stream of liquid lava.”
So it was Jules Verne and Eros that turned my infant thoughts to science.
Giving his own reason, in 'Seventy-Five Reasons to Become a Scientist', American Scientist (Sep-Oct 1988), 76, No. 5, 450. Dyson gives more background details in 'Preface', From Eros to Gaia (1992), viii. Dyson included all of his unfinished childhood novel as Chap. 1 of the same book, p.3-7. Note the word 9-yr-old Dyson knew in 1933, “Sattelite” [sic].
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Men go into space to see whether it is the kind of place where other men, and their families and their children, can eventually follow them. A disturbingly high proportion of the intelligent young are discontented because they find the life before them intolerably confining. The moon offers a new frontier. It is as simple and splendid as that.
Editorial on the moon landing, The Economist (1969).
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Newton’s passage from a falling apple to a falling moon was an act of the prepared imagination. Out of the facts of chemistry the constructive imagination of Dalton formed the atomic theory. Davy was richly endowed with the imaginative faculty, while with Faraday its exercise was incessant, preceding, accompanying and guiding all his experiments. His strength and fertility as a discoverer are to be referred in great part to the stimulus of the imagination.
In 'The Scientific Use of the Imagination', Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays, Addresses, and Reviews (1892), Vol. 2, 104.
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No matter when you had been to this spot before, a thousand years ago or a hundred thousand years ago, or if you came back to it a million years from now, you would see some different things each time, but the scene would be generally the same.
[Referring to the topography of the Moon.]
Co-author with Michael Collins, Buzz Aldrin, Edwin E. Aldrin, Grace Farmer (ed.) and Dora Jane Hamblin (ed.), First on the Moon(1970), 297.
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No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life-fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.
In Earth Shine (1969). As quoted and cited in Joseph J. Kerski, Interpreting Our World: 100 Discoveries That Revolutionized Geography (2016), 93.
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Not greatly moved with awe am I
To learn that we may spy
Five thousand firmaments beyond our own.
The best that's known
Of the heavenly bodies does them credit small.
View'd close, the Moon's fair ball
Is of ill objects worst,
A corpse in Night's highway, naked, fire-scarr'd, accurst;
And now they tell
That the Sun is plainly seen to boil and burst
Too horribly for hell.
So, judging from these two,
As we must do,
The Universe, outside our living Earth,
Was all conceiv'd in the Creator's mirth,
Forecasting at the time Man's spirit deep,
To make dirt cheap.
Put by the Telescope!
Better without it man may see,
Stretch'd awful in the hush'd midnight,
The ghost of his eternity.
'The Two Deserts' (1880-85). Poems, Introduction Basil Champneys (1906), 302.
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Nothing is more symptomatic of the enervation, of the decompression of the Western imagination, than our incapacity to respond to the landings on the Moon. Not a single great poem, picture, metaphor has come of this breathtaking act, of Prometheus’ rescue of Icarus or of Phaeton in flight towards the stars.
…...
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Oh, my dear Kepler, how I wish that we could have one hearty laugh together. Here, at Padua, is the principal professor of philosophy, whom I have repeatedly and urgently requested to look at the moon and planets through my glass, [telescope] which he pertinaciously refuses to do. Why are you not here? what shouts of laughter we should have at this glorious folly! and to hear the professor of philosophy at Pisa laboring before the grand duke with logical arguments, as if with magical incantations, to charm the new planets out of the sky.
From Letter to Johannes Kepler. As translated in John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, Life of Galileo Galilei: With Illustrations of the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1832), 92-93.
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On the way back [from the moon] we had an EVA [extra-vehicular activity, or spacewalk] I had a chance to look around while I was outside and Earth was off to the right, 180,000 miles away, a little thin sliver of blue and white like a new moon surrounded by this blackness of space. Back over my left shoulder was almost a full moon. I didn’t feel like I was a participant. It was like sitting in the last row of the balcony, looking down at all of that play going on down there. I had that insignificant feeling of the immensity of this, God’s creation.
Reflecting on his participation on the Apollo 16 moon mission. Contributed to Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988), unpaginated, with photo 55.
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One can argue that mathematics is a human activity deeply rooted in reality, and permanently returning to reality. From counting on one’s fingers to moon-landing to Google, we are doing mathematics in order to understand, create, and handle things, … Mathematicians are thus more or less responsible actors of human history, like Archimedes helping to defend Syracuse (and to save a local tyrant), Alan Turing cryptanalyzing Marshal Rommel’s intercepted military dispatches to Berlin, or John von Neumann suggesting high altitude detonation as an efficient tactic of bombing.
In 'Mathematical Knowledge: Internal, Social and Cultural Aspects', Mathematics As Metaphor: Selected Essays (2007), 3.
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One had to be a Newton to notice that the moon is falling, when everyone sees that it doesn’t fall.
…...
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One hardly knows where, in the history of science, to look for an important movement that had its effective start in so pure and simple an accident as that which led to the building of the great Washington telescope, and went on to the discovery of the satellites of Mars.
In The Reminiscences of an Astronomer (1903), Vol. 3, 128.
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One of the most striking results of modern investigation has been the way in which several different and quite independent lines of evidence indicate that a very great event occurred about two thousand million years ago. The radio-active evidence for the age of meteorites; and the estimated time for the tidal evolution of the Moon's orbit (though this is much rougher), all agree in their testimony, and, what is far more important, the red-shift in the nebulae indicates that this date is fundamental, not merely in the history of our system, but in that of the material universe as a whole.
The Solar System and its Origin (1935), 137.
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One single equation for the motion of the Moon covers some 250 large-size pages and represents the major effort of a lifetime.
In Earth, Moon and Planets (1963), 28.
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One-sixth gravity on the surface of the moon is just delightful. It’s not like being in zero gravity, you know. You can drop a pencil in zero gravity and look for it for three days. In one-sixth gravity, you just look down and there it is.
In Houston Chronicle (2004) as cited in Will Dunham, 'John Young, “most experienced” U.S. astronaut, dies at 87', on Reuters website (6 Jan 2018).
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Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Starving backstage, morning-stars are jaded
The moonshine murmur still shivers alone
Curved slice of sliver, shear breath shadows stone
Suspending twilight shiny and shaded
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Carving solace into silver in June
On horizons’ glow from forgotten gold
The moonshine’s’ shilling delivers alone
Gleaming duels of knights, pierce deathly silence
Steel tines of starlight, clashing swords they hold
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
Dimples aware, sparkle sand on the dune
Winking at comets, after tails are told
The moon-sand whispers, sift rivers alone
Sharpness they hone, filing skills onto stone
Starlight dazzles, its own space created
Painting the desert, sun-setting the tone
From owls’ talon, moonlight shimmers alone
…...
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People give ear to an upstart astrologer [Copernicus] who strove to show that the earth revolves, not the heavens or the firmament, the sun and the moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the very best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy.
c. 1543, in The Experts Speak by Christopher Cerf and Victor Navasky (1998).
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Qualified scientists in Washington believe that the atom-blasting of Japan is the start toward heating plants the size of telephone booths for great factories, and motor-car trips of 1,000 hours on one gram of fuel. One expert estimated that with a few grams of uranium it might be possible to power the Queen Mary from Europe to the U.S. and back again. One of America’s leading scientists, Doctor Vollrath, said that the new discovery brings man’s attempt to reach the moon within bounds of possibility.
Newspaper
The Maple Leaf (8 Aug 1945), 4.
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Radio has become one of the world’s great social forces; it educates, informs, and entertains. Distance has been annihilated. … The face of the moon has felt the ping of a radar pulse and echoed it back in two seconds to revive predictions of interplanetary communications.
In address (Fall 1946) at a dinner in New York to commemorate the 40 years of Sarnoff’s service in the radio field, 'Institute News and Radio Notes: The Past and Future of Radio', Proceedings of the Institute of Radio Engineers (I.R.E.), (May 1947), 35, No. 5, 498. [In 1946, foreshadowing the communications from interplanetary probes like Voyager and others. —Webmaster]
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Reaching the Moon by three-man vessels in one long bound from Earth is like casting a thin thread across space. The main effort, in the coming decades, will be to strengthen this thread; to make it a cord, a cable, and, finally, a broad highway.
In 'The Coming Decades in Space', Boy’s Life (Jun 1972), 8. Reprinted in The Beginning and the End (1977), 203.
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Returning to the moon is an important step for our space program. Establishing an extended human presence on the moon could vastly reduce the costs of further space exploration, making possible ever more ambitious missions. Lifting heavy spacecraft and fuel out of the Earth’s gravity is expensive. Spacecraft assembled and provisioned on the moon could escape its far lower gravity using far less energy, and thus, far less cost. Also, the moon is home to abundant resources. Its soil contains raw materials that might be harvested and processed into rocket fuel or breathable air. We can use our time on the moon to develop and test new approaches and technologies and systems that will allow us to function in other, more challenging environments. The moon is a logical step toward further progress and achievement.
Speech, NASA Headquarters (14 Jan 2004). In Office of the Federal Register (U.S.) Staff (eds.), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush (2007), 58.
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Roses have thorns, and silver fountains mud.
Clouds and eclipses stain both moon and sun,
And loathsome canker lives in sweetest bud.
All men make faults, and even I in this.
Sonnet 35.
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Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.
In The New Atheism: Taking a Stand for Science and Reason (2009), 59. As attributed on a web page using the quote as a title at web site of Richard Dawkins Foundation.
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Scientists alone is true poet he gives us the moon / he promises the stars he’ll make us a new universe if it comes to that.
From poem, 'Poem Rocket', in Kaddish and Other Poems (1961).
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Scientists constantly get clobbered with the idea that we spent 27 billion dollars on the Apollo programs, and are asked “What more do you want?” We didn't spend it; it was done for political reasons. ... Apollo was a response to the Bay of Pigs fiasco and to the successful orbital flight of Yuri Gagarin. President Kennedy's objective was not to find out the origin of the moon by the end of the decade; rather it was to put a man on the moon and bring him back, and we did that.
Quoted by Dennis Meredith, in 'Carl Sagan's Cosmic Connection and Extraterrestrial Life-Wish', Science Digest (Jun 1979), 85, 38 & 89. Reproduced in Carl Sagan and Tom Head, Conversations With Sagan (2006), 55-56.
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Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars
…...
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Since [World War I] we have seen the atomic age, the computer age, the space age, and the bio-engineering age, each as epochal as the Bronze Age, the Iron Age, the Renaissance and the Industrial Revolution. And all these have occurred in one generation. Man has stood on the moon and looked back on the earth, that small planet now reduced to a neighbourhood. But our material achievements have exceeded the managerial capacities of our human minds and institutions.
As quoted in Colin Bingham (ed.), Wit and Wisdom: A Public Affairs Miscellany (1982), 227.
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So much goes into doing a transplant operation. All the way from preparing the patient, to procuring the donor. It's like being an astronaut. The astronaut gets all the credit, he gets the trip to the moon, but he had nothing to do with the creation of the rocket, or navigating the ship. He's the privileged one who gets to drive to the moon. I feel that way in some of these more difficult operations, like the heart transplant.
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So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
[Written when the first manned mission to the Moon, Apollo 11, landed (20 Jul 1969).]
'Why on Earth Are We There? Because It's Impossible', New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 17.
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Some people have remarked that if the surface of the moon were covered with diamonds, it would hardly be worthwhile bringing them back.
In interview, Rushworth M. Kidder, 'Grounded in Space Science', Christian Science Monitor (22 Dec 1989).
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Some think that the earth remains at rest. But Philolaus the Pythagorean believes that, like the sun and moon, it revolves around the fire in an oblique circle. Heraclides of Pontus, and Ephantus the Pythagorean make the earth move, not in a progressive motion, but like a wheel in a rotation from west to east about its own center.
From Preface to Book on the Revolutions.
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Such pretensions to nicety in experiments of this nature, are truly laughable! They will be telling us some day of the WEIGHT of the MOON, even to drams, scruples and grains—nay, to the very fraction of a grain!—I wish there were infallible experiments to ascertain the quantum of brains each man possesses, and every man's integrity and candour:—This is a desideratum in science which is most of all wanted.
The Death Warrant of the French Theory of Chemistry (1804), 217.
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Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.
…...
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Sustainable energy is the equivalent of the U.S. moon shot.
Quoted in Andrew C. Revkin, 'Panel Urges Global Shift on Sources of Energy', New York Times (23 Oct 2007).
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That hemisphere of the moon which faces us is better known than the earth itself; its vast desert plains have been surveyed to within a few acres; its mountains and craters have been measured to within a few yards; while on the earth's surface there are 30,000,000 square kilometres (sixty times the extent of France), upon which the foot of man has never trod, which the eye of man has never seen.
In 'Mars, by the Latest Observations', Popular Science (Dec 1873), 4, 187.
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That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.
[Transmission received and heard as “That’s one small step for man… one giant leap for mankind.”]
Said as he stepped onto the Moon at 10.56 (G.M.T) on July 21st 1969. However, this is often misquoted as “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” This was due to static during Armstrong's transmission to earth. The 'a' was left out of his statement, ruining the contrast he had made between one man 'a man' and all mankind 'man'. Quoted in Nature, 1974, 250, 451. Information on the frequent misuse of this quote is given in Paul F. Boller and John George (eds.), They Never Said it: A Book of Fake Quotes, Misquotes and Misleading Attributions (1989), 4-5.
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The [Moon] surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine sandy particles.
[First report, immediately after stepping on to the Moon and saying “That's one small step for (a) man; one giant leap for mankind.”]
NASA web site. Also in David Michael Harland, The First Men on the Moon: the Story of Apollo 11 (2007), 461.
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The art of flying has only just been born; it will be perfected, and some day we’ll go to the Moon.
In Entretiens sur la Pluralité des Mondes (1686), as translated in Conversations on the Plurality of Worlds (1990), 34.
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The astronauts go to the moon, and what do they do?
They collect rocks, they lope around like they are stoned, and they hit a golf ball and they plant a flag. … All that technology to get to the moon, and what do we do—we play golf. … The moon walk was out of sight, wasn’t it?
With one giant step mankind took banality out of America and into the Cosmos. …
In 'Appearing Nightly,' (1980) [See Neil Armstrong].
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The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars … and then on the surface.
In his article, '40 Years After Apollo 11 Moon Landing, It’s Time for a Mission to Mars', in Washington post (16 Jul 2009).
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The chemical compounds are comparable to a system of planets in that the atoms are held together by chemical affinity. They may be more or less numerous, simple or complex in composition, and in the constitution of the materials, they play the same role as Mars and Venus do in our planetary system, or the compound members such as our earth with its moon, or Jupiter with its satellites... If in such a system a particle is replaced by one of different character, the equilibrium can persist, and then the new compound will exhibit properties similar to those shown by the original substance.
Quoted in Ralph Oesper, The Human Side of Scientists (1975), 55.
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The child asks, “What is the moon, and why does it shine?” “What is this water and where does it run?” “What is this wind?” “What makes the waves of the sea?” “Where does this animal live, and what is the use of this plant?” And if not snubbed and stunted by being told not to ask foolish questions, there is no limit to the intellectual craving of a young child; nor any bounds to the slow, but solid, accretion of knowledge and development of the thinking faculty in this way. To all such questions, answers which are necessarily incomplete, though true as far as they go, may be given by any teacher whose ideas represent real knowledge and not mere book learning; and a panoramic view of Nature, accompanied by a strong infusion of the scientific habit of mind, may thus be placed within the reach of every child of nine or ten.
In 'Scientific Education', Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (1870), 71. https://books.google.com/books?id=13cJAAAAIAAJ Thomas Henry Huxley - 1870
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The cold chaste Moon, the Queen of Heaven’s bright isles,
Who makes all beautiful on which she smiles!
That wandering shrine of soft, yet icy flame,
Which ever is transformed yet still the same,
And warms, but not illumines.
In Epipsychidion (1821), 16.
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The Earth has no business possessing such a Moon. It is too huge—over a quarter Earth’s diameter and about 1/81 of its mass. No other planet in the Solar System has even nearly so large a satellite.
In Asimov on Physics (1976), 46. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 166.
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The earth is flat, being borne upon air, and similarly the sun, moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride upon the air through their flatness.
Hippolytus, Refutation 1.7.4. In G. S. Kirk, J. E. Raven and M.Schofield (eds), The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History with a Selection of Texts (1983), p. 154.
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The experiments that we will do with the LHC [Large Hadron Collider] have been done billions of times by cosmic rays hitting the earth. ... They're being done continuously by cosmic rays hitting our astronomical bodies, like the moon, the sun, like Jupiter and so on and so forth. And the earth's still here, the sun's still here, the moon's still here. LHC collisions are not going to destroy the planet.
As quoted in Alan Boyle, 'Discovery of Doom? Collider Stirs Debate', article (8 Sep 2008) on a msnbc.com web page.
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The eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding.
Address at Rice University in Houston (12 Sep 1962). On website of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. [This go-to-the-moon speech was largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen.]
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The famous set of pictures taken from the moon, [celebrate] the birth of a global consciousness that will help build a peaceful future for humankind. That future is in the hands of those who dedicate their lives to explore Teilhard de Chardin’s three infinities: the infinitely big, the infinitely small, and the infinitely complex. And from all the beauty they discover while crossing perpetually receding frontiers, they develop for nature and for humankind an infinite love.
From concluding paragraph written for 'Foreword' to Kevin W. Kelley (ed.), The Home Planet (1988), paragraph 8 (unpaginated).
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The first principles of the universe are atoms and empty space. Everything else is merely thought to exist. The worlds are unlimited. They come into being and perish. Nothing can come into being from that which is not nor pass away into that which is not. Further, the atoms are unlimited in size and number, and they are borne along in the whole universe in a vortex, and thereby generate all composite things—-fire, water, air, earth. For even these are conglomerations of given atoms. And it is because of their solidarity that these atoms are impassive and unalterable. The sun and the moon have been composed of such smooth and spherical masses [i.e. atoms], and so also the soul, which is identical with reason.
Diogenes Laertius IX, 44. Trans. R. D. Hicks (1925), Vol. 2, 453-5. An alternate translation of the opening is "Nothing exists except atoms and empty space; everything else is opinion."
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The first thing the reasonable man must do is to be content with a very little knowledge and a very great deal of ignorance. The second thing he must do is to make the utmost possible use of the knowledge he has and not waste his energy crying for the moon. The third thing he must do is try and see clearly where his knowledge ends and his ignorance begins.
Scientific Method: An Inquiry into the Character and Validy of Natural Law (1923), 177.
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The honor you have given us goes not to us as a crew, but to ... all Americans, who believed, who persevered with us. What Apollo has begun we hope will spread out in many directions, not just in space, but underneath the seas, and in the cities to tell us unforgettably what we will and must do. There are footprints on the moon. Those footprints belong to each and every one of you, to all mankind. They are there because of the blood, sweat, and tears of millions of people. Those footprints are the symbol of true human spirit.
From his acceptance speech (13 Aug 1969) for the Medal of Freedom presented to him as one of the three astronauts on the first manned moon landing mission. In Leon Wagener, One Giant Leap: Neil Armstrong's Stellar American Journey (2004), 226.
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The largest land animal is the elephant, and it is the nearest to man in intelligence: it understands the language of its country and obeys orders, remembers duties that it has been taught, is pleased by affection and by marks of honour, nay more it possesses virtues rare even in man, honesty, wisdom, justice, also respect for the stars and reverence for the sun and moon.
Natural History, 8, I. Trans. H. Rackham, Pliny: Natural History (1947), Vol. 3, 3.
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The message from the Moon which we have flashed to the far corners of this planet is that no problem need any longer be considered insoluble.
…...
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The Moon and its phases gave man his first calendar. Trying to match that calendar with the seasons helped give him mathematics. The usefulness of the calendar helped give rise to the thought of beneficent gods. And with all that the Moon is beautiful, too.
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 164.
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The Moon and the weather
May change together;
But change of the Moon
Does not change the weather.
If we’d no moon at all,
And that may seem strange,
We still should have weather
That’s subject to change.
Anonymous
Cited as “heard many years ago” in Notes and Queries (23 Sep 1882), 246. Quoted in George Frederick Chambers, The Story of the Weather Simply Told for General Readers (1897), 197.
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The Moon by us to you her greeting sends,
But bids us say that she’s an ill-used moon,
And takes it much amiss that you should still
Shuffle her days, and turn them topsy-turvy;
And that the gods (who know their feast-days well),
By your false count are sent home supperless,
And scold and storm at her for your neglect.
From poem, 'The Clouds', quoted in William Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences (1837), 126. Concerning the imperfect calendar used in ancient Greece in which multiples of the lunar cycles did not exactly correspond to the solar year.
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The moon is a very nice place. When we landed, we were 20 minutes behind. Because time on the Moon was so precious, what I remember most is trying to catch up.
As quoted in 'NASA Mourns the Passing of Astronaut John Young' (6 Jan 2018) on nasa.gov website.
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The Moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the Moon that pulls the tides, and the Moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the Moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist.... When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.
…...
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The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
In The View from Serendip (1977), 87.
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The moon landing will, no doubt, be an epoch-making event—a phenomena of awe, unrestrained excitement and sensation. But, the most wondrous event would be if man could relinquish all the stains and defilements of the untamed mind and progress toward achieving the real mental peace and satisfaction when he reaches the moon.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
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The moon makes her circuit of the heaven in twenty-eight days plus about an hour, and with her return to the sign from which she set forth, completes a lunar month.
Vitruvius
In De Architectura, Book 9, Chap 1, Sec. 5. As translated in Morris Hicky Morgan (trans.), Vitruvius: The Ten Books on Architecture (1914), 258.
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The moon, which is a favorite of the poets and portrayed by the Buddhists as representing the esthetic qualities of peace, serenity and beauty, is now being conquered by man’s ever expanding knowledge of science and technology. What was a mere conceptional imagination is today a concrete reality. The American landing on the moon symbolizes the very acme of scientific achievement. It is indeed a phenomenal feat of far-reaching consequences for the world of science.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
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The night walked down the sky with the moon in her hand.
…...
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The ocean's bottom is at least as important to us as the moon's behind.
Gordon Lill and Arthur Maxwell, quoting a proverb of the American Miscellaneous Society (AMSOC, which Lill co-founded), 'The Earth's Mantle', Science (22 May 1959), 129, No. 3360, 1410.
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The poet alone knows astronomy, chemistry, vegetation, and animation, for he does not stop at these facts, but employs them as signs. He knows why the plain, or meadow of space, was strown with these flowers we call suns, and moons, and stars; why the deep is adorned with animals, with men, and gods; for, in every word he speaks he rides on them as the horses of thought.
Essay, 'The Poet', in Ralph Waldo Emerson, Alfred Riggs Ferguson (ed.) and Jean Ferguson Carr (ed.), The Collected Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Volume III, Essays: Second Series (1984), 104.
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The pre-Darwinian age had come to be regarded as a Dark Age in which men still believed that the book of Genesis was a standard scientific treatise, and that the only additions to it were Galileo’s demonstration of Leonardo da Vinci’s simple remark that the earth is a moon of the sun, Newton’s theory of gravitation, Sir Humphry Davy's invention of the safety-lamp, the discovery of electricity, the application of steam to industrial purposes, and the penny post.
Back to Methuselah: a Metabiological Pentateuch (1921), viii.
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The primary rocks, … I regard as the deposits of a period in which the earth’s crust had sufficiently cooled down to permit the existence of a sea, with the necessary denuding agencies,—waves and currents,—and, in consequence, of deposition also; but in which the internal heat acted so near the surface, that whatever was deposited came, matter of course, to be metamorphosed into semi-plutonic forms, that retained only the stratification. I dare not speak of the scenery of the period. We may imagine, however, a dark atmosphere of steam and vapour, which for age after age conceals the face of the sun, and through which the light of moon or star never penetrates; oceans of thermal water heated in a thousand centres to the boiling point; low, half-molten islands, dim through the log, and scarce more fixed than the waves themselves, that heave and tremble under the impulsions of the igneous agencies; roaring geysers, that ever and anon throw up their intermittent jets of boiling fluid, vapour, and thick steam, from these tremulous lands; and, in the dim outskirts of the scene, the red gleam of fire, shot forth from yawning cracks and deep chasms, and that bears aloft fragments of molten rock and clouds of ashes. But should we continue to linger amid a scene so featureless and wild, or venture adown some yawning opening into the abyss beneath, where all is fiery and yet dark,—a solitary hell, without suffering or sin,—we would do well to commit ourselves to the guidance of a living poet of the true faculty,—Thomas Aird and see with his eyes.
Lecture Sixth, collected in Popular Geology: A Series of Lectures Read Before the Philosophical Institution of Edinburgh, with Descriptive Sketches from a Geologist's Portfolio (1859), 297-298.
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The ravages committed by man subvert the relations and destroy the balance which nature had established between her organized and her inorganic creations; and she avenges herself upon the intruder, by letting loose upon her defaced provinces destructive energies hitherto kept in check by organic forces destined to be his best auxiliaries, but which he has unwisely dispersed and driven from the field of action. When the forest is gone, the great reservoir of moisture stored up in its vegetable mould is evaporated, and returns only in deluges of rain to wash away the parched dust into which that mould has been converted. The well-wooded and humid hills are turned to ridges of dry rock, which encumbers the low grounds and chokes the watercourses with its debris, and–except in countries favored with an equable distribution of rain through the seasons, and a moderate and regular inclination of surface–the whole earth, unless rescued by human art from the physical degradation to which it tends, becomes an assemblage of bald mountains, of barren, turfless hills, and of swampy and malarious plains. There are parts of Asia Minor, of Northern Africa, of Greece, and even of Alpine Europe, where the operation of causes set in action by man has brought the face of the earth to a desolation almost as complete as that of the moon; and though, within that brief space of time which we call “the historical period,” they are known to have been covered with luxuriant woods, verdant pastures, and fertile meadows, they are now too far deteriorated to be reclaimable by man, nor can they become again fitted for human use, except through great geological changes, or other mysterious influences or agencies of which we have no present knowledge, and over which we have no prospective control. The earth is fast becoming an unfit home for its noblest inhabitant, and another era of equal human crime and human improvidence, and of like duration with that through which traces of that crime and that improvidence extend, would reduce it to such a condition of impoverished productiveness, of shattered surface, of climatic excess, as to threaten the depravation, barbarism, and perhaps even extinction of the species.
Man and Nature, (1864), 42-3.
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The realization that our small planet is only one of many worlds gives mankind the perspective it needs to realize sooner that our own world belongs to all of its creatures, that the Moon landing marks the end of our childhood as a race and the beginning of a newer and better civilization.
Webmaster, as yet, has not traced a primary source. Although this is widely quoted in print and online, each time is without source cited. An early example is Laurence J. Peter (ed.), Peter’s Quotations (1977, 1979), 539. The moon landing was on 20 Jul 1969, and Clarke may have contributed this quote during an interview after that day. Clarke had previously speculated, in 1951, on the possible words of a historian from the year 3000, “The coming of the rocket brought to an end a million years of isolation. With the landing of the first spaceship on Mars and Venus, the childhood of our race was over and history as we know it began.” In 'Concerning Means and Ends', The Exploration of Space (1951), 195. This is contained in a longer quote on this webpage, beginning: “[What verdict would a historian of the year 3000…].
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The reason the cow jumped over the moon was because there was a short circuit in the milking machine.
Anonymous
In E.C. McKenzie, 14,000 Quips and Quotes for Speakers, Writers, Editors, Preachers, and Teachers (1990), 24.
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The rockets that have made spaceflight possible are an advance that, more than any other technological victory of the twentieth century, was grounded in science fiction… . One thing that no science fiction writer visualized, however, as far as I know, was that the landings on the Moon would be watched by people on Earth by way of television.
In Asimov on Physics (1976), 35. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 307.
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The sea is not all that responds to the moon. Twice a day the solid earth bobs up and down, as much as a foot. That kind of force and that kind of distance are more than enough to break hard rock. Wells will flow faster during lunar high tides.
Annals of the Former World
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The Spacious Firmament on high,
With all the blue Etherial Sky,
And spangled Heav’ns, a Shining Frame, Their great Original proclaim:
Th’unwearied Sun, from day to day
Does his Creator’s Pow’r display,
And publishes to every Land
The Work of an Almighty Hand.
Soon as the Evening Shades prevail,
The Moon takes up the wondrous Tale,
And nightly to the listning Earth Repeats the Story of her Birth:
Whilst all the Stars that round her burn,
And all the Planets, in their turn,
Confirm the Tidings as they rowl,
And spread the Truth from Pole to Pole.
What though, in solemn Silence, all
Move round the dark terrestrial Ball?
What tho’ nor real Voice nor Sound
Amid their radiant Orbs be found?
In Reason’s Ear they all rejoice,
And utter forth a glorious Voice,
For ever singing, as they shine,
“The Hand that made us is Divine”.
The Spectator, no. 465, Saturday 23 August 1712. In D. F. Bond (ed.) The Spectator (1965), Vol. 4, 144-5.
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The success of Apollo was mainly due to the fact that the project was conceived and honestly presented to the public as an international sporting event and not as a contribution to science. The order of priorities in Apollo was accurately reflected by the first item to be unloaded after each landing on the Moon's surface, the television camera. The landing, the coming and going of the astronauts, the exploring of the moon's surface, the gathering of Moon rocks and the earthward departure, all were expertly choreographed with the cameras placed in the right positions to make a dramatic show on television. This was to me the great surprise of the Apollo missions. There was nothing surprising in the fact that astronauts could walk on the Moon and bring home Moon rocks. There were no big scientific surprises in the chemistry of the Moon rocks or in the results of magnetic and seismic observations that the astronauts carried out. The big surprise was the quality of the public entertainment that the missions provided. I had never expected that we would see in real time astronauts hopping around in lunar gravity and driving their Rover down the Lincoln- Lee scarp to claim a lunar speed record of eleven miles per hour. Intensive television coverage was the driving force of Apollo. Von Braun had not imagined the possibilities of television when he decided that one kilohertz would be an adequate communication bandwidth for his Mars Project.
From a Danz lecture at University of Washington, 'Sixty Years of Space Science 1958-2018' (1988), collected in From Eros to Gaia (1992), Vol. 5, 52.
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The sun and the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago—as even their infinitely more numerous analogues on the earth beneath are likely to disappear—had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.
In The Dance of Life (1923), 352.
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The sun is larger than the moon, and, in fact, … is so enormous that if we could hollow out the sun’s globe and place the earth in the centre, there would still be so much room that the moon might go on moving in her present orbit at two hundred and forty thousand miles from the earth,—all within the globe of the sun itself,—and have plenty of room to spare.
In The New Astronomy (1888), 5.
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The test of science is not whether you are reasonable—there would not be much of physics if that was the case—the test is whether it works. And the great point about Newton’s theory of gravitation was that it worked, that you could actually say something about the motion of the moon without knowing very much about the constitution of the Earth.
From Assumption and Myth in Physical Theory (1967), 10.
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The vast spread
Of darkness
That speaks of mystery
The darkness that reveals
The beauty that lies beneath
In the form of glittering
Stars, a countless beauty
That seemed to conceal
A million stories
That can make the mankind
Take a new look at life
And the majestic moon
That silently looks at mankind
Wondering how its serenity
Was disturbed by the little steps
Of a man from the beautiful earth
Yet softly smiling back
And let the world sleep
In its magical glow
A glow that soothes
The world’s senses
And forget the pain of reality
…...
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The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me - a small disk, 240,000 miles away… Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don’t show from that distance.
…...
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The view of the moon that we’ve been having recently is really spectacular. It fills about three-quarters of the hatch window, and of course we can see the entire circumference even though part of it is in complete shadow and part of it is in earthshine. It’s a view worth the price of the trip.
…...
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The ways of science are unpredicatable: it can get men up to the moon, but it cannot get pigeons down from public buildings.
Anonymous
In Evan Esar, 20,000 Quips and Quotes, 703.
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Then if the first argument remains secure (for nobody will produce a neater one, than the length of the periodic time is a measure of the size of the spheres), the order of the orbits follows this sequence, beginning from the highest: The first and highest of all is the sphere of the fixed stars, which contains itself and all things, and is therefore motionless. It is the location of the universe, to which the motion and position of all the remaining stars is referred. For though some consider that it also changes in some respect, we shall assign another cause for its appearing to do so in our deduction of the Earth’s motion. There follows Saturn, the first of the wandering stars, which completes its circuit in thirty years. After it comes Jupiter which moves in a twelve-year long revolution. Next is Mars, which goes round biennially. An annual revolution holds the fourth place, in which as we have said is contained the Earth along with the lunar sphere which is like an epicycle. In fifth place Venus returns every nine months. Lastly, Mercury holds the sixth place, making a circuit in the space of eighty days. In the middle of all is the seat of the Sun. For who in this most beautiful of temples would put this lamp in any other or better place than the one from which it can illuminate everything at the same time? Aptly indeed is he named by some the lantern of the universe, by others the mind, by others the ruler. Trismegistus called him the visible God, Sophocles' Electra, the watcher over all things. Thus indeed the Sun as if seated on a royal throne governs his household of Stars as they circle around him. Earth also is by no means cheated of the Moon’s attendance, but as Aristotle says in his book On Animals the Moon has the closest affinity with the Earth. Meanwhile the Earth conceives from the Sun, and is made pregnant with annual offspring. We find, then, in this arrangement the marvellous symmetry of the universe, and a sure linking together in harmony of the motion and size of the spheres, such as could be perceived in no other way. For here one may understand, by attentive observation, why Jupiter appears to have a larger progression and retrogression than Saturn, and smaller than Mars, and again why Venus has larger ones than Mercury; why such a doubling back appears more frequently in Saturn than in Jupiter, and still more rarely in Mars and Venus than in Mercury; and furthermore why Saturn, Jupiter and Mars are nearer to the Earth when in opposition than in the region of their occultation by the Sun and re-appearance. Indeed Mars in particular at the time when it is visible throughout the night seems to equal Jupiter in size, though marked out by its reddish colour; yet it is scarcely distinguishable among stars of the second magnitude, though recognized by those who track it with careful attention. All these phenomena proceed from the same course, which lies in the motion of the Earth. But the fact that none of these phenomena appears in the fixed stars shows their immense elevation, which makes even the circle of their annual motion, or apparent motion, vanish from our eyes.
'Book One. Chapter X. The Order of the Heavenly Spheres', in Copernicus: On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres (1543), trans. A. M. Duncan (1976), 49-51.
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Then we upon our globe’s last verge shall go,
And view the ocean leaning on the sky:
From thence our rolling Neighbours we shall know,
And on the Lunar world securely pry.
'Annus Mirabilis The year of Wonders, 1666' (1667), lines 653-6, in James Kinsley (ed.), The Poems and Fables of John Dryden (1962), 81.
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There is a place with four suns in the sky—red, white, blue, and yellow; two of them are so close together that they touch, and star-stuff flows between them. I know of a world with a million moons. I know of a sun the size of the Earth—and made of diamond. There are atomic nuclei a few miles across which rotate thirty times a second. There are tiny grains between the stars, with the size and atomic composition of bacteria. There are stars leaving the Milky Way, and immense gas clouds falling into it. There are turbulent plasmas writhing with X- and gamma-rays and mighty stellar explosions. There are, perhaps, places which are outside our universe. The universe is vast and awesome, and for the first time we are becoming a part of it.
Opening paragraph, in 'Introduction' Planetary Exploration (1970), 15.
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There is not perhaps another object in the heavens that presents us with such a variety of extraordinary phenomena as the planet Saturn: a magnificent globe, encompassed by a stupendous double ring: attended by seven satellites: ornamented with equatorial belts: compressed at the poles: turning upon its axis: mutually eclipsing its ring and satellites, and eclipsed by them: the most distant of the rings also turning upon its axis, and the same taking place with the farthest of the satellites: all the parts of the system of Saturn occasionally reflecting light to each other: the rings and moons illuminating the nights of the Saturnian: the globe and satellites enlightening the dark parts of the rings: and the planet and rings throwing back the sun's beams upon the moons, when they are deprived of them at the time of their conjunctions. (1805)
Quoted in John Vose, A System of Astronomy: On the Principles of Copernicus (1827), 66-67.
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There is nothing in the world more peaceful than apple-leaves with an early moon.
…...
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There is something haunting in the light of the moon; it has all the dispassionateness of a disembodied soul, and something of its inconceivable mystery.
In Lord Jim (1900), 230.
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Therefore the moon, the governess of floods,
Pale in her anger washes all the air,
That rheumatic diseases do abound;
And through this distemperature we see
The seasons alter: hoary-headed frosts
Fall in the fresh lap of the crimson rose.
A Midsummer Night's Dream (1595-6), II, i.
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They had neither compass, nor astronomical instruments, nor any of the appliances of our time for finding their position at sea; they could only sail by the sun, moon, and stars, and it seems incomprehensible how for days and weeks, when these were invisible, they were able to find their course through fog and bad weather; but they found it, and in the open craft of the Norwegian Vikings, with their square sails, fared north and west over the whole ocean, from Novaya Zemlya and Spitsbergen to Greenland, Baffin Bay, Newfoundland, and North America.
In northern mists: Arctic exploration in early times - Volume 1 - Page 248 https://books.google.com/books?id=I1ugAAAAMAAJ Fridtjof Nansen - 1911
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This has been far more than three men on a mission to the Moon; more still than the efforts of a government and industry team; more, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.
…...
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This is in a real sense the capstone of the initial missions to explore the planets. Pluto, its moons and this part of the solar system are such mysteries that New Horizons will rewrite all of the textbooks.
…...
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This is the excellent foppery of the world: that when we are sick in fortune—often the surfeits of our own behaviour—we make guilty of our disasters the sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains on necessity, fools by heavenly compulsion, knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance, drunkards, liars, and adulterers, by an enforced obedience of planetary influence, and all that we are evil in, by a divine thrusting on. An admirable evasion of whoremaster man, to lay his goatish disposition on the charge of a star! My father compounded with my mother under the Dragon's tail and my nativity was under Ursa Major, so that it follows that I am rough and lecherous. Fut! I should have been that I am had the maidenliest star in the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.
King Lear (1605-6), I, ii.
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This shall be the test of innocence—if I can hear a taunt, and look out on this friendly moon, pacing the heavens in queenlike majesty, with the accustomed yearning.
In 'Sin Destroys the Perception of the Beautiful' (13 Nov 1837). In Henry David Thoreau and Bradford Torrey (ed.), The Writings of Henry Thoreau: Journal: I: 1837-1846 (1906), 9.
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This very sun, this very moon, these stars, this very order and revolution of the universe, is the same which your ancestors enjoyed, and which will be the admiration of your posterity.
From Essay 1, Chapter 19. In Craufurd Tait Ramage (ed.), Beautiful Thoughts from French and Italian Authors (1866), 164.
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Three thousand stadia from the earth to the moon,—the first station. From thence to the sun about five hundred parasangs. ... Marvel not, my comrade, if I appear talking to you on super-terrestrial and aerial topics. The long and the short of the matter is that I am running over the order of a Journey I have lately made. ... I have travelled in the stars.
One of the earliest examples of what might be regarded as science fiction.
Icaromennipus, or the Aerial Jaunt in Ainsworth Rand Spofford (ed.), Rufus Edmonds Shapley (ed.) The Library of Wit and Humor, Prose and Poetry, Selected from the Literature of all Times and Nations (1894), vol. 4, 282-283. A shortened quote is on the title page of H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon (1901).
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Thy shadow, Earth, from Pole to Central Sea,
Now steals along upon the Moon's meek shine
In even monochrome and curving line Of imperturbable serenity.
How shall I link such sun-cast symmetry
With the torn troubled form I know as thine,
That profile, placid as a brow divine,
With continents of moil and misery?
'At a Lunar Eclipse'. In James Gibson (ed.), The Complete Poems of Thomas Hardy (1976), 116.
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To a body of infinite size there can be ascribed neither center nor boundary ... Just as we regard ourselves as at the center of that universally equidistant circle, which is the great horizon and the limit of our own encircling ethereal region, so doubtless the inhabitants of the moon believe themselves to be at the center (of a great horizon) that embraces this earth, the sun, and the stars, and is the boundary of the radii of their own horizon. Thus the earth no more than any other world is at the center; moreover no points constitute determined celestial poles for our earth, just as she herself is not a definite and determined pole to any other point of the ether, or of the world-space; and the same is true for all other bodies. From various points of view these may all be regarded either as centers, or as points on the circumference, as poles, or zeniths and so forth. Thus the earth is not in the center of the universe; it is central only to our own surrounding space.
Irving Louis Horowitz, The Renaissance Philosophy of Giordano Bruno (1952), 60.
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To make still bigger telescopes will be useless, for the light absorption and temperature variations of the earth’s atmosphere are what now limits the ability to see fine detail. If bigger telescopes are to be built, it will have to be for use in an airless observatory, perhaps an observatory on the moon.
(1965). In Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 284.
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To most ... of us, Russia was as mysterious and remote as the other side of the moon and not much more productive when it came to really new ideas or inventions. A common joke of the time [mid 1940s] said that the Russians could not surreptitiously introduce nuclear bombs in suitcases into the United States because they had not yet been able to perfect a suitcase.
In Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atomic Bomb (1986), 760.
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To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.
(1896). As quoted in Firmin Joseph Krieger, Behind the Sputniks: A Survey of Soviet Space Science (1958), 23.
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Tonight, the moon came out, it was nearly full.
Way down here on earth, I could feel it’s pull.
The weight of gravity or just the lure of life,
Made me want to leave my only home tonight.
I’m just wondering how we know where we belong
Is it in the arc of the moon, leaving shadows on the lawn
In the path of fireflies and a single bird at dawn
Singing in between here and gone
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Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one’s stomach the separation from terra … these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known … this is the only thing I can say about the matter. … The utilitarian results do not interest me.
In 'Reactions to Man’s Landing on the Moon Show Broad Variations in Opinions', The New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 6.
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We all know we fall. Newton’s discovery was that the moon falls, too—and by the same rule that we do.
Epigraph in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 112.
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We are not to think that Jupiter has four satellites given him by nature, in order, by revolving round him, to immortalize the name of the Medici, who first had notice of the observation. These are the dreams of idle men, who love ludicrous ideas better than our laborious and industrious correction of the heavens.—Nature abhors so horrible a chaos, and to the truly wise, such vanity is detestable.
From Nodus Gordius, Appendix, as cited in John Elliot Drinkwater Bethune, Life of Galileo Galilei: With Illustrations of the Advancement of Experimental Philosophy (1832), 93.
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We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade... not because they are easy but because they are hard.
From Address at Rice Stadium (12 Sep 1962). On website of John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. [This go-to-the-moon speech was largely written by presidential advisor and speechwriter Ted Sorensen.]
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We debase the richness of both nature and our own minds if we view the great pageant of our intellectual history as a compendium of new in formation leading from primal superstition to final exactitude. We know that the sun is hub of our little corner of the universe, and that ties of genealogy connect all living things on our planet, because these theories assemble and explain so much otherwise disparate and unrelated information–not because Galileo trained his telescope on the moons of Jupiter or because Darwin took a ride on a Galápagos tortoise.
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We developed a computer program, based on tests of a quarter-scale model of the lunar module, and we ran the program through some 400 different [moon] landing conditions.
From interview with Technology Review, quoted in Douglas Martin, 'Joseph Gavin, Who Helped Put First Man on Moon, Dies at 90', New York Times (4 Nov 2010).
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We entered into shadow. Contact with Moscow was gone. Japan floated by beneath us and I could clearly see its cities ablaze with lights. We left Japan behind to face the dark emptiness of the Pacific Ocean. No moon. Only stars, bright and far away. I gripped the handle like a man hanging onto a streetcar. Very slowly, agonizingly, half an hour passed, and with that, dawn on Earth. First, a slim greenish-blue line on the farthest horizon turning within a couple of minutes into a rainbow that hugged the Earth and in turn exploded into a golden sun. You’re out of your mind, I told myself, hanging onto a ship in space, and to your life, and getting ready to admire a sunrise.
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We expect that the study of lunar geology will help to answer some longstanding questions about the early evolution of the earth. The moon and the earth are essentially a two-planet system, and the two bodies are probably closely related in origin. In this connection the moon is of special interest because its surface has not been subjected to the erosion by running water that has helped to shape the earth’s surface.
In Scientific American (Sep 1964). As cited in '50, 100 & 150 Years Ago', Scientific American (Dec 2014), 311, No. 6, 98.
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We have taken to the Moon the wealth of this nation,
the vision of its political leaders,
the intelligence of its scientists,
the dedication of its engineers,
the careful craftsmanship of its workers,
and the enthusiastic support of its people.
We have brought back rocks, and I think it is a fair trade . . .
Man has always gone where he has been able to go. It’s that simple.
He will continue pushing back his frontier,
no matter how far it may carry him from his homeland.
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We know less about the ocean's bottom than about the moon's back side.
Quoted in obituary, Physics Today (Feb 1992) 120.
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We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream. And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math, and science, and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers.
Speech, NASA Headquarters (14 Jan 2004). In Office of the Federal Register (U.S.) Staff (eds.), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush (2007), 58-59.
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We speak of it [astrology] as an extinct science; yet let but an eclipse of the sun happen, or a comet visit the evening sky, and in a moment we all believe in astrology. In vain do you tell the gazers on such spectacles that a solar eclipse is only the moon acting for the time as a candle-extinguisher to the sun, and give them bits of smoked glass to look through, and draw diagrams on the blackboard to explain it all. They listen composedly, and seem convinced, but in their secret hearts they are saying—“What though you can see it through a glass darkly, and draw it on a blackboard, does that show that it has no moral significance? You can draw a gallows or a guillotine, or write the Ten Commandments on a blackboard, but does that deprive them of meaning?” And so with the comet. No man will believe that the splendid stranger is hurrying through the sky solely on a momentous errand of his own. No! he is plainly signalling, with that flashing sword of his, something of importance to men,—something at all events that, if we could make it out, would be found of huge concern to us.
From 'Introductory Lecture on Technology for 1858-59', published as The Progress of the Telegraph (1859), 19-20.
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We were very privileged to leave on the Moon a plaque ... saying, ‘For all Mankind’. Perhaps in the third millennium a wayward stranger will read the plaque at Tranquility Base. We’ll let history mark that this was the age in which that became a fact. I was struck this morning in New York by a proudly waved but uncarefully scribbled sign. It said, ‘Through you we touched the Moon.’ It was our privilege today to touch America. I suspect perhaps the most warm, genuine feeling that all of us could receive came through the cheers and shouts and, most of all, the smiles of our fellow Americans. We hope and think that those people shared our belief that this is the beginning of a new era—the beginning of an era when man understands the universe around him, and the beginning of the era when man understands himself.
Acceptance speech (13 Aug 1969), upon receiving the Medal of Freedom as a member of the first manned moon-landing mission. In James R. Hansen, First Man: The Life of Neil A. Armstrong (2005), 569.
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We will undertake extended human missions to the moon as early as 2015, with the goal of living and working there for increasingly extended periods.
Speech, NASA Headquarters (14 Jan 2004). In Office of the Federal Register (U.S.) Staff (eds.), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush (2007), 58.
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What [man landing on the moon] is doing up there is indulging his obsession with the impossible. The impossible infuriates and tantalizes him. Show him an impossible job and he will reduce it to a possibility so trite that eventually it bores him.
'Why on Earth Are We There? Because It's Impossible', New York Times (21 Jul 1969), 17.
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What fiction could match - in drama or suspense - man’s first walk on the Moon?
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What is more difficult, to think of an encampment on the moon or of Harlem rebuilt? Both are now within the reach of our resources. Both now depend upon human decision and human will.
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What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.
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Whatever be the detail with which you cram your student, the chance of his meeting in after life exactly that detail is almost infinitesimal; and if he does meet it, he will probably have forgotten what you taught him about it. The really useful training yields a comprehension of a few general principles with a thorough grounding in the way they apply to a variety of concrete details. In subsequent practice the men will have forgotten your particular details; but they will remember by an unconscious common sense how to apply principles to immediate circumstances. Your learning is useless to you till you have lost your textbooks, burnt your lecture notes, and forgotten the minutiae which you learned by heart for the examination. What, in the way of detail, you continually require will stick in your memory as obvious facts like the sun and the moon; and what you casually require can be looked up in any work of reference. The function of a University is to enable you to shed details in favor of principles. When I speak of principles I am hardly even thinking of verbal formulations. A principle which has thoroughly soaked into you is rather a mental habit than a formal statement. It becomes the way the mind reacts to the appropriate stimulus in the form of illustrative circumstances. Nobody goes about with his knowledge clearly and consciously before him. Mental cultivation is nothing else than the satisfactory way in which the mind will function when it is poked up into activity.
In 'The Rhythm of Education', The Aims of Education: & Other Essays (1917), 41.
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When I admire the wonders of a sunset or the beauty of the moon, my soul expands in the worship of the creator.
Quoted in Kim Lim (ed.), 1,001 Pearls of Spiritual Wisdom: Words to Enrich, Inspire, and Guide Your Life (2014), 165
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When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
Bible
Psalms VIII, verses 3-4, in The Book of Psalms: Containing the Prayer Book Version, The Authorized Version and The Revised Version: in Parallel Columns (1899), 8, Authorized Version column.
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When I consider Thy heavens, the work of thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which thou hast ordained; What is man, that Thou art mindful of him? and the son of man, that thou visitest him?
Bible
Psalm VIII, 3-4. In George D'Oyly and Richard Mant (eds.), The Holy Bible According to the Authorized Version (1839).
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When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won’t be because its inhabitants visited their own moon. That first step, like a newborn’s cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy.
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When the moon is ninety degrees away from the sun it sees but half the earth illuminated (the western half). For the other (the eastern half) is enveloped in night. Hence the moon itself is illuminated less brightly from the earth, and as a result its secondary light appears fainter to us.
The Starry Messenger (1610), trans. Stillman Drake, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (1957), 45.
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When the movement of the comets is considered and we reflect on the laws of gravity, it will be readily perceived that their approach to Earth might there cause the most woeful events, bring back the deluge, or make it perish in a deluge of fire, shatter it into small dust, or at least turn it from its orbit, drive away its Moon, or, still worse, the Earth itself outside the orbit of Saturn, and inflict upon us a winter several centuries long, which neither men nor animals would be able to bear. The tails even of comets would not be unimportant phenomena, if in taking their departure left them in whole or part in our atmosphere
From Cosmologische Briefe über die Einrichtung des Weltbaues (1761). As quoted in Carl Sagan, Broca’s Brain: Reflections on the Romance of Science (1986), 95.
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When the president said, “We’re going to send a man to the moon and return him safely,” the safe part sounded pretty good. But they were using hydrogen, and the only thing I knew about hydrogen was that they used it with the Hindenburg, and that didn’t work out too good.
Interview (30 Sep 2004) with Morley Safer at luncheon after official reopening of Rocket Park. As quoted in Corey Kilgannon, 'The Rocket Park Reopens, And Cronkite Reminisces', New York Times (1 Oct 2004), B6.
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Whoopie! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil but that’s a long one for me.
(Commenting as the third man to step on the lunar surface, though of smaller stature, 5' 6", than Neil Armstrong.)
Spoken as Commander of the Apollo 12 lunar landing (1969). In British Broadcasting Corporation, The Listener (1969), 82, 729. On the previous Apollo 11 landing, Armstrong's famous remark had been "one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." At 5' 6", Conrad was six inches shorter than Armstrong.
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Why Become Extinct? Authors with varying competence have suggested that dinosaurs disappeared because the climate deteriorated (became suddenly or slowly too hot or cold or dry or wet), or that the diet did (with too much food or not enough of such substances as fern oil; from poisons in water or plants or ingested minerals; by bankruptcy of calcium or other necessary elements). Other writers have put the blame on disease, parasites, wars, anatomical or metabolic disorders (slipped vertebral discs, malfunction or imbalance of hormone and endocrine systems, dwindling brain and consequent stupidity, heat sterilization, effects of being warm-blooded in the Mesozoic world), racial old age, evolutionary drift into senescent overspecialization, changes in the pressure or composition of the atmosphere, poison gases, volcanic dust, excessive oxygen from plants, meteorites, comets, gene pool drainage by little mammalian egg-eaters, overkill capacity by predators, fluctuation of gravitational constants, development of psychotic suicidal factors, entropy, cosmic radiation, shift of Earth’s rotational poles, floods, continental drift, extraction of the moon from the Pacific Basin, draining of swamp and lake environments, sunspots, God’s will, mountain building, raids by little green hunters in flying saucers, lack of standing room in Noah’s Ark, and palaeoweltschmerz.
'Riddles of the Terrible Lizards', American Scientist (1964) 52, 231.
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Why had we come to the moon?
The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.
The First Men in the Moon (1901)
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With the experience and knowledge gained on the moon, we will then be ready to take the next steps of space exploration: human missions to Mars and to worlds beyond.
Speech, NASA Headquarters (14 Jan 2004). In Office of the Federal Register (U.S.) Staff (eds.), Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States, George W. Bush (2007), 58.
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Xenophanes of Kolophon ... says that ... [t]he sun is formed each day from small fiery particles which are gathered together: the earth is infinite, and is not surrounded by air or by sky; an infinite number of suns and moons exist, and all things come from earth. The sea, he said, is salt because so many things flow together and become mixed in it...
Doxographists, Epiph. adv. Haer. iii. 9; Dox. 590. Quoted in Arthur Fairbanks (ed. And trans.), The First Philosophers of Greece (1898), 83.
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You can stop splitting the atom; you can stop visiting the moon; you can stop using aerosols; you may even decide not to kill entire populations by the use of a few bombs. But you cannot recall a new form of life.
Letter to the editor of Science (1976). Quoted in Rose M. Morgan, The Genetics Revolution (2006), 3.
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You’ve watched the Star Trek and the Star Wars and all those movies, and everything is evil looking and all sharp and angular. But on the moon it’s not that way at all. It’s all smooth and…just sort of rounded, general rolling terrain except for the individual rocks and things. And they were angular, but the general impression was just the rounded mountains that came down and then rolled into the valley, and then the valley rolled away to the horizon… it was mostly gray in color, but some of the rocks were white and some were gray…. It was just tremendously exciting to stand on the moon. I can’t even put into words the excitement that I experienced as I stood there looking across this dramatic landscape, which was absolutely lifeless.
Describing his first impression of the moon landscape and sky, as quoted in Colin Burgess, Footprints in the Dust: The Epic Voyages of Apollo, 1969-1975 (2010), 422-423.
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Carl Sagan Thumbnail In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion. (1987) -- Carl Sagan
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