Quotes About Universe

The beach reminds us of space. Fine sand grains, all more or less uniform in size, have been produced from the larger rocks through ages of jostling and rubbing, abrasion and erosion, again driven through waves and weather by distinct moon and Sun. The beach also reminds us of time. The world is much older than human species.

On the scale of worlds—to say nothing of stars or galaxies—humans are inconsequential, a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.

There is something stunningly narrow about how the Anthropic Principle is phrased. Yes, only certain laws and constants of nature are consistent with our kind of life. But essentially the same laws and constants are required to make a rock. So why not talk about a Universe designed so rocks could one day come to be, and strong and weak Lithic Principles? If stones could philosophize, I imagine Lithic Principles would be at the intellectual frontiers.

there is no deeper religious feeling than the feeling for the natural world. I wouldn't separate the world of nature from the religious instinct...I would not even object to saying that the sense of awe before the grandeur of nature is itself a religious experience.

You might imagine an uncharitable extraterrestrial observer looking down on our species... - with us excitedly chattering, The Universe is created for us! We're at the center! Everything pays homage to us! - and concluding that our pretensions are amusing, our aspirations pathetic, that this must be the planet of the idiots.

I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the Earth Ã¢â'¬Â¦

There are some hundred billion (1011) galaxies, each with, on the average, a hundred billion stars.

The Cosmos extends, for all practical purposes, forever. After a brief and sedentary hiatus we are resuming our ancient nomadic way of life. Our remote descendants, safely arrayed on many worlds though through the Solar System and beyond, will be unified by their common heritage, by their regard for their home planet, and by knowledge that, whatever other life may be, the only humans in all the Universe come from Earth.

Across the sea of space. The stars are other suns. We have traveled this way before. And there is much to be learned.

These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given fifteen billion years of cosmic evolution.

Those afraid of the universe as it really is, those who pretend to nonexistent knowledge and envision a Cosmos centered on human beings will prefer the fleeting comforts of superstition. They avoid rather than confront the world. But those with the courage to explore the weave and structure of the Cosmos, even where it differs profoundly from their wishes and prejudices, will penetrate its deepest mysteries.

We are a way for the cosmos to know itself

Man is the matter of the cosmos, contemplating itself.

We live in a vast and awesome universe in which, daily, suns are made and worlds destroyed, where humanity clings to an obscure clod of rock. The significance of our lives and our fragile realm derives from our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning.

In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty.

El Universo no parece ni benigno ni hostil, simplemente indiferente a las preocupaciones de seres tan insignificantes como nosotros.

We have examined the universe in space and seen that we live on a mote of dust circling a humdrum star in the remotest corner of an obscure galaxy. And if we are a speck in the immensity of space, we also occupy an instant in the expanse of ages.

We are, almost all of us, descended from people who responded to the dangers of existence by inventing stories about unpredictable or disgruntled deities. For a long time the human instinct to understand was thwarted by facile religious explanations [...]. For thousands of years humans were oppressed - as some of us still are - by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods.

The Milky Way Galaxy is one of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies notable neither in mass nor in brightness nor in how its stars are configured and arrayed. Some modern deep sky photographs show more galaxies beyond the Milky Way than stars within the Milky Way. Every one of them is an island universe containing perhaps a hundred billion suns. Such an image is a profound sermon on humility.

It never happens that a new constellation suddenly rises out of the east. There is an order, a predictability, a permanence about the stars. In a way, they are almost comforting.

The surface of the Earth is the shore of the cosmic ocean. From it we have learned most of what we know. Recently, we have waded a little out to sea, enough to dampen our toes or, at most, wet our ankles. The water seems inviting. The ocean calls. Some part of our being knows this is from where we came. We long to return. These aspirations are not, I think, irreverent, although they may trouble whatever gods may be.

Each of us is a tiny being, permitted to ride on the outermost skin of one of the smaller planets for a few dozen trips around the local star.

Something very strange is going on in the depths of space.

Apart from a thin film of life at the very surface of the Earth, an occasional intrepid spacecraft, and some radio static, our impact on the Universe is nil. It knows nothing of us.