Weve Quotes (13 quotes)
As much as we�ve enjoyed it up here, we�re also starting to look forward to seeing all the people back on Earth that we miss and love so much.
Cosmology does, I think, affect the way that we perceive humanity�s role in nature. One thing we�ve learnt from astronomy is that the future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past. Even our sun is less than halfway through its life.
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we�ve ever known.
It is easy to overlook this thought that life just is. As humans we are inclined to feel that life must have a point. We have plans and aspirations and desires. We want to take constant advantage of the intoxicating existence we�ve been endowed with. But what�s life to a lichen? Yet its impulse to exist, to be, is every bit as strong as ours-arguably even stronger. If I were told that I had to spend decades being a furry growth on a rock in the woods, I believe I would lose the will to go on. Lichens don�t. Like virtually all living things, they will suffer any hardship; endure any insult, for a moment�s additions existence. Life, in short just wants to be.
No video, no photographs, no verbal descriptions, no lectures can provide the enchantment that a few minutes out-of-doors can: watch a spider construct a web; observe a caterpillar systematically ravaging the edge of a leaf; close your eyes, cup your hands behind your ears, and listen to aspen leaves rustle or a stream muse about its pools and eddies. Nothing can replace plucking a cluster of pine needles and rolling them in your fingers to feel how they�re put together, or discovering that �sedges have edges and grasses are round,� The firsthand, right-and-left-brain experience of being in the out-of-doors involves all the senses including some we�ve forgotten about, like smelling water a mile away. No teacher, no student, can help but sense and absorb the larger ecological rhythms at work here, and the intertwining of intricate, varied and complex strands that characterize a rich, healthy natural world.
Not every one of our desires can be immediately gratified. We�ve got to learn to wait patiently for our dreams to come true, especially on the path we�ve chosen. But while we wait, we need to prepare symbolically a place for our hopes and dreams.
Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it�s the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself; Science fiction is central to everything we�ve ever done, and people who make fun of science fiction writers don�t know what they��re talking about
Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you�re less romantic you can say we�re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We�ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you�re less romantic you can say we�re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine.
We�ve made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.
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.
We haven�t got the money, so we�ve got to think!
We seem to think that God speaks by seconding the ideas we�ve already adopted, but God nearly always catches us by surprise...God tends to confound, astonish, and flabbergast.
We�ve all got both light and dark inside us. What matters is the part we choose to act on. That�s who we really are.
We�ve come a long way, we�ve come a long way and we never even left L.A.