1.
I love biomedical science, I love astronomy, and you can't really do much with those in a fantasy setting.
Elizabeth Moon
2.
I had the intention of becoming a theologian...but now I see how God is, by my endeavors, also glorified in astronomy, for 'the heavens declare the glory of God.'
Johannes Kepler
4.
I knew that even if I were second or third rate, it was astronomy that mattered.
Edwin Powell Hubble
5.
It is surrounded by a thin flat ring, inclined to the ecliptic, and nowhere touches the body of the planet.
Christiaan Huygens
6.
This sight... is by far the noblest astronomy affords.
Edmond Halley
7.
Astronomy is something like the ministry. No one should go into it without a call. I got that unmistakable call, and I know that even if I were second-rate or third-rate, it was astronomy that mattered.
Edwin Powell Hubble
8.
Astronomy's much more fun when you're not an astronomer
Brian May
9.
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
10.
I liked math - that was my favorite subject - and I was very interested in astronomy and in physical science.
Sally Ride
11.
Theories crumble, but good observations never fade.
Harlow Shapley
12.
The great spirals, with their enormous radial velocities and insensible proper motions, apparently lie outside our Solar system.
Edwin Powell Hubble
14.
In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy.
Nicholas of Cusa
15.
System debugging has always been a graveyard-shift occupation, like astronomy.
Fred Brooks
16.
The scorn which I had reason to fear on account of the novelty and unconventionality of my opinion almost induced me to abandon completely the work which I had undertaken. . . . Astronomy is written for astronomers. To them my work too will seem, unless I am mistaken, to make some contribution.
Nicolaus Copernicus
17.
To command their professors of astronomy to refute their own observations is to command them not to see what they do see and not to understand what they do understand.
Galileo Galilei
19.
Geology, in the magnitude and sublimity of the objects of which it treats, undoubtedly ranks, in the scale of the sciences, next to astronomy.
John Herschel
22.
Astronomy teaches the correct use of the sun and the planets.
Stephen Leacock
23.
Our fantastic civilization has fallen out of touch with many aspects of nature, and with none more completely than with night.
Henry Beston
24.
In 1959 the University recognized our work by appointing me to a new Chair of Radio Astronomy.
Martin Ryle
25.
An observer situated in a nebula and moving with the nebula will observe the same properties of the universe as any other similarly situated observer at any time.
Hermann Bondi
26.
I am convinced that everything has come down to us from the banks of the Ganges, astronomy, astrology, metempsychosis, etc. It does not behoove us, who were only savages and barbarians when these Indians and Chinese peoples were civilized and learned, to dispute their antiquity.
Voltaire
27.
There is in the universe neither center nor circumference.
Giordano Bruno
28.
I'm interested in astrology and astronomy.
Emm Gryner
29.
The stars awaken a certain reverence, because though always present, they are inaccessible.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
30.
The narrow sectarian cannot read astronomy with impunity. The creeds of his church shrivel like dried leaves at the door of the observatory.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
32.
If the Lord Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon his creation, I should have recommended something simpler.
Remarking on the complexity of Ptolemaic model of the universe after it was explained to him.
Alfonso X of Castile
34.
The Mars Polar Lander has been quieter than George W. Bush after a foreign policy question.
David Letterman
35.
...for a long time I wanted to become a theologian... now, however, behold how through my efforts God is being debated in astronomy.
Johannes Kepler
36.
Astronauts: rotarians in outer space.
Gore Vidal
38.
Do you believe in astrology? -I don't even believe in astronomy.
Peter De Vries
39.
Nothing can be more destructive to ambition, and the passion for conquest, than the true system of astronomy. What a poor thing is even the whole globe in comparison of the infinite extent of nature!
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle
40.
Astronomy? Impossible to understand and madness to investigate.
Sophocles
41.
In first place we must observe that the universe is spherical. This is either because that figure is the most perfect, as not being articulated, but whole and complete in itself; or because it is the most capacious and therefore best suited for that which is to contain and preserve all things.
Nicolaus Copernicus
42.
There are only certain intervals of time when life of any sort is possible in an expanding universe and we can practise astronomy only during that habitable time interval in cosmic history.
John D. Barrow
43.
It seems to me that all the evidence points to Apollonius as the founder of Greek mathematical astronomy.
Otto E. Neugebauer
46.
I got into science fiction by being interested in astronomy first.
Terry Pratchett
48.
The Astronomer's Drinking Song Astronomers! What can avail Those who calumniate us; Experiment can never fail With such an apparatus.
Augustus De Morgan
49.
A lot of work and money has been spent on astronomy and yet we have not found life. So we are rare, and rare things tend to be fragile and you have to be careful about them
John Gummer
50.
Astronomy was the cradle of the natural sciences and the starting point of geometrical theories.
Cornelius Lanczos