First, just some random quotes I heard/read lately.
Age is a matter of mind; if you don’t mind, it doesn’t matter. ~author unknown
Do not in the dark of night, what you shun in the broad daylight. ~author unknown
Whatever doesn’t kill you really does make you stronger. ~author unknown
Now, for some quotes on the unknown. That black void called space. The last, great frontier.
We have no proof, but if we extrapolate, based on the best information we have available to us, we have to come to the conclusion that … other life probably exists out there and perhaps in many places… ~Neil Armstrong, October 21, 1999
At two-tenths the speed of light, dust and atoms might not do significant damage even in a voyage of 40 years, but the faster you go, the worse it is–space begins to become abrasive. When you begin to approach the speed of light, hydrogen atoms become cosmic-ray particles, and they will fry the crew. …So 60,000 kilometers per second may be the practical speed limit for space travel. ~Isaac Asimov
I love to revel in philosophical matters—especially astronomy. I study astronomy more than any other foolishness there is. I am a perfect slave to it. I am at it all the time. I have got more smoked glass than clothes. I am as familiar with the stars as the comets are. I know all the facts and figures and have all the knowledge there is concerning them. I yelp astronomy like a sun-dog, and paw the constellations like Ursa Major. ~Mark Twain, letter to the San Francisco Alta California newspaper, 1 August 1869.
Looking at these stars suddenly dwarfed my own troubles and all the gravities of terrestrial life. I thought of their unfathomable distance, and the slow inevitable drift of their movements out of the unknown past into the unknown future. ~H. G. Wells, The Time Machine, 1895.
The wonder is, not that the field of stars of so vast, but that man has measured it. ~Anatole France, The Garden of Epicurus, 1894.
The Universe, so far as we can observe it, is a wonderful and immense engine; its extent, its order, its beauty, its cruelty, makes it alike impressive. ~George Santayana, The Life of Reason, 1916.
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science. ~Edwin Hubble, The Nature of Science, 1954.
There is beauty in space, and it is orderly. There is no weather, and there is regularity. It is predictable. Just look at our little Explorer; you can set your clock by it—literally; it is more accurate than your clock. Everything in space obeys the laws of physics. If you know these laws, and obey them, space will treat you kindly. ~Wernher von Braun, quoted in ‘Space: Reach for the Stars’, Time magazine, 17 February 1958.
Turn the Page 