Astronomy is the scientific study of the universe and of objects that exist naturally in space, such as the moon, the sun, planets, and stars. Inspirational astronomy quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for famous science quotes that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of popular biology quotes, powerful chemistry quotes and famous physics quotes.
Famous Astronomy Quotes
In my studies of astronomy and philosophy I hold this opinion about the universe, that the Sun remains fixed in the centre of the circle of heavenly bodies, without changing its place; and the Earth, turning upon itself, moves round the Sun. Galileo Galilei
Recognize that the very molecules that make up your body, the atoms that construct the molecules, are traceable to the crucibles that were once the centers of high mass stars that exploded their chemically rich guts into the galaxy, enriching pristine gas clouds with the chemistry of life. So that we are all connected to each other biologically, to the earth chemically and to the rest of the universe atomically. That’s kinda cool! That makes me smile and I actually feel quite large at the end of that. It’s not that we are better than the universe, we are part of the universe. We are in the universe and the universe is in us. Neil deGrasse Tyson
The contemplation of celestial things will make a man both speak and think more sublimely and magnificently when he descends to human affairs. Marcus Tullius Cicero
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. And, the atoms in your left hand probably came from a different star than your right hand. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics: You are all stardust. You couldn’t be here if stars hadn’t exploded, because the elements the carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, iron, all the things that matter for evolution and for life weren’t created at the beginning of time. They were created in the nuclear furnaces of stars, and the only way for them to get into your body is if those stars were kind enough to explode. So, forget Jesus. The stars died so that you could be here today. Lawrence M. Krauss
Astronomy, as nothing else can do, teaches men humility. Arthur C. Clarke
If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore; and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God which had been shown! But every night come out these envoys of beauty, and light the universe with their admonishing smile. Ralph Waldo Emerson
Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a God, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock. Anaxagoras
The time will come when diligent research over long periods will bring to light things which now lie hidden. A single lifetime, even though entirely devoted to the sky, would not be enough for the investigation of so vast a subject. And so this knowledge will be unfolded only through long successive ages. There will come a time when our descendants will be amazed that we did not know things that are so plain to them. Many discoveries are reserved for ages still to come, when memory of us will have been effaced. Seneca
My goal is simple. It is a complete understanding of the universe, why it is as it is and why it exists at all. Stephen Hawking
Stars are beautiful, but they must not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. It is a punishment put on them for something they did so long ago that no star now knows what it was. J.M. Barrie
The cosmos is within us. We are made of star stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself. Carl Sagan
He insisted that stars were people so well loved, they were traced in constellations, to live forever. Jodi Picoult
For every one billion particles of antimatter, there were one billion and one particles of matter. Albert Einstein
We are stardust brought to life, then empowered by the universe to figure itself out and we have only just begun. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Time and space and gravitation have no separate existence from matter. Albert Einstein
Philosophy nature is written in that great book which ever is before our eyes I mean the universe but we cannot understand it if we do not first learn the language and grasp the symbols in which it is written. The book is written in mathematical language, and the symbols are triangles, circles and other geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of it; without which one wanders in vain through a dark labyrinth. Galileo
I don’t think the human race will survive the next 1,000 years, unless we spread into space. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars. Stephen Hawking
And when you look at the sky you know you are looking at stars which are hundreds and thousands of light years away from you. And some of the stars don’t even exist anymore because their light has taken so long to get to us that they are already dead, or they have exploded and collapsed into red dwarfs. And that makes you seem very small, and if you have difficult things in you life it is nice to think that they are what is called negligible, which means they are so small you don’t have to take them into account when you are calculating something. Mark Haddon
One of the basic rules of the universe is that nothing is perfect. Perfection simply doesn’t exist. Stephen Hawking
Before we invented civilization our ancestors lived mainly in the open out under the sky. Before we devised artificial lights and atmospheric pollution and modern forms of nocturnal entertainment we watched the stars. There were practical calendar reasons of course but there was more to it than that. Even today the most jaded city dweller can be unexpectedly moved upon encountering a clear night sky studded with thousands of twinkling stars. When it happens to me after all these years it still takes my breath away. Carl Sagan
Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe. Ron Garan
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. Neil Armstrong
Maybe you who condemn me are in greater fear than I who am condemned. Giordano Bruno
I know the sky is not the limit because there are footprints on the Moon and I made some of them! Buzz Aldrin
People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe. Neil deGrasse Tyson
Never limit yourself because of others limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination. Mae Jemison
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space. Lord Byron George Gordon
Space is for everybody. It’s not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. Christa McAuliffe
Our universe grants every soul a twin a reflection of themselves the kindred spirit And no matter where they are or how far away they are from each other even if they are in different dimensions, they will always find one another. This is destiny; this is love. Julie Dillon
I believe that space travel will one day become as common as airline travel is today. Buzz Aldrin
My days I devote to reading and experiments in chemistry, and I spend many of the clear nights in the study of astronomy. There is, though I do not know how there is or why there is, a sense of infinite peace and protection in the glittering hosts of heaven. There it must be, I think, in the vast and eternal laws of matter, and not in the daily cares and sins and troubles of men, that whatever is more than animal within us must find its solace and its hope. H.G. Wells
I try to forget what happiness was, and when that don’t work, I study the stars. Derek Walcott
A circle has no end. Isaac Asimov
Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture. Jacob Bronowski
Any patch of sunlight in a wood will show you something about the sun which you could never get from reading books on astronomy. These pure and spontaneous pleasures are ‘patches of Godlight’ in the woods of our experience. C.S. Lewis
I have. A terrible need. Shall I say the word? Of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars. Vincent Van Gogh
The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. Ferdinand Magellan
Every atom in your body came from a star that exploded. It really is the most poetic thing I know about physics You are all stardust. Lawrence Krauss
Orion is above the horizon now, and near it Jupiter, brighter than it will ever be. But i expect you can see it too. Some of our stars are the same. Thomas Harris
We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them. Mark Twain
Your Excellency, I have no need of this hypothesis. Pierre Laplace
It is far better to grasp the universe as it is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying it may be. Carl Sagan
Dark matter has a gravitation effect on other objects. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction. Jodi Picoult
For astronomy is not only pleasant, but also very useful to be known it cannot be denied that this art unfolds the admirable wisdom of God. John Calvin
Astronomy to the selfish becomes astrology. Ralph Waldo Emerson
It does not at first appear that an astronomer rapt in abstraction, while he gazes on a star, must feel more exquisite delight than a farmer who is conducting his team. Isaac D’Israeli
Discover the force of the skies O Men once recognised it can be put to use. Johannes Kepler
The wonder is, not that the field of stars is so vast, but that man has measured it. Anatole France
The stars, they are as the sun. Each star. Every star. And those spheres they are worlds, realms, each one different yet the same. Steven Erikson
Moon in the sky, stars out, the wide open expanse of nothing it made him feel free and alive as the daytime never did. Chuck Wendig
The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky. Anaximander of Miletus
For, to my mind, this is a certain principle, that nothing is here treated of but the visible form of the world. He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. John Calvin
It’s amazing to me that we humans have the intellectual capacity to ask deep questions and to devise methods for learning how the universe works and how its contents evolve with time. Alex Filippenko
Dark matter has a gravitation effect on other objects. You can’t see it, you can’t feel it, but you can watch something being pulled in its direction. Jodi Picoult
At night the sky is pure astronomy. Nicole Krauss
Compared to a star, we are like mayflies, fleeting ephemeral creatures who live out their lives in the course of a single day. Carl Sagan
Some piously record In the beginning God, but I say In the beginning hydrogen. Harlow Shapley
Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different. Jodi Picoult
There’s no obvious reason to assume that the very same rare properties that allow for our existence would also provide the best overall setting to make discoveries about the world around us. We don’t think this is merely coincidental. It cries out for another explanation, an explanation that points to purpose and intelligent design in the cosmos. Guillermo Gonzalez
The church says the earth is flat; but I have seen its shadow on the moon, and I have more confidence even in a shadow than in the church. Ferdinand Magellan
At every level in our inventory, nothing seems special about our Earth, our Sun, our Galaxy, our Local Group. Evidently, mediocrity reigns throughout. Such is our niche in the Universe. Eric Chaisson
The history of astronomy is a history of receding horizons. Edwin P Hubble
Some people think the Milky Way is a long line of stars, but it isn’t. Our galaxy is a huge disk of stars millions of light years across, and the solar system is somewhere near the outside edge of the disk. Mark Haddon
Discover the force of the skies O Men once recognized it can be put to use. Johannes Kepler
Timing is easy to predict through the movement of the stars as they give the propensity of pure potential. Ambika Devi
By looking far out into space we are also looking far back into time, back toward the horizon of the universe, back toward the epoch of the Big Bang. Carl Sagan
I often considered whether there could perhaps be found a more reasonable arrangement of circles. Nicolaus Copernicus
People who believe they are ignorant of nothing have neither looked for, nor stumbled upon, the boundary between what is known and unknown in the universe. Neil deGrasse Tyson
We want union with something, even if the opposite seems true. Bring two atomic nuclei together and their positive electrostatic forces will repel each other, but, with the patience and strength of the blind god of the galaxies, there comes a point where something bigger takes over and welds them together. Physicists call it the Strong Nuclear Force; I’ve called this magic glue God. All the elements heavier than hydrogen were so formed, forged in the great hearts of the stars sulphur, potassium, gold, radium. Everything you can think of. Sean J. Halford
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space. Lord Byron
If you are a sea level adapted human, then your health is at risk by working at the biologically toxic Mauna Kea Observatories. Steven Magee
The discovery of a new dish does more for the happiness of the human race than the discovery of a star. Jean Anthelme Brillat Savarin
Stars are only meant to be seen at night. Anthony T. Hincks
Stars are beautiful, but they must not take an active part in anything, they must just look on forever. J.M. Barrie
They noticed that Earth tilted in relation to the sun, offering first one hemisphere and then the other over the course of the year. Kieran Mulvaney
