Astronomy Inspirational Quotes

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

I have realized; it is during the times I am far outside my element that I experience myself the most. That I see and feel who I really am, the most! I think that's what a comet is like, you see, a comet is born in the outer realms of the universe! But it's only when it ventures too close to our sun or to other stars that it releases the blazing "tail" behind it and shoots brazen through the heavens! And meteors become sucked into our atmosphere before they burst like firecrackers and realize that they're shooting stars! That's why I enjoy taking myself out of my own element, my own comfort zone, and hurling myself out into the unknown. Because it's during those scary moments, those unsure steps taken, that I am able to see that I'm like a comet hitting a new atmosphere: suddenly I illuminate magnificently and fire dusts begin to fall off of me! I discover a smile I didn't know I had, I uncover a feeling that I didn't know existed in me... I see myself. I'm a shooting star. A meteor shower. But I'm not going to die out. I guess I'm more like a comet then. I'm just going to keep on coming back.

The wreckage of stars - I built a world from this wreckage.

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.

4. Religion. Your reason is now mature enough to examine this object. In the first place, divest yourself of all bias in favor of novelty & singularity of opinion... shake off all the fears & servile prejudices, under which weak minds are servilely crouched. Fix reason firmly in her seat, and call to her tribunal every fact, every opinion. Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear. You will naturally examine first, the religion of your own country. Read the Bible, then as you would read Livy or Tacitus. The facts which are within the ordinary course of nature, you will believe on the authority of the writer, as you do those of the same kind in Livy and Tacitus. The testimony of the writer weighs in their favor, in one scale, and their not being against the laws of nature, does not weigh against them. But those facts in the Bible which contradict the laws of nature, must be examined with more care, and under a variety of faces. Here you must recur to the pretensions of the writer to inspiration from God. Examine upon what evidence his pretensions are founded, and whether that evidence is so strong, as that its falsehood would be more improbable than a change in the laws of nature, in the case he relates. For example in the book of Joshua we are told the sun stood still several hours. Were we to read that fact in Livy or Tacitus we should class it with their showers of blood, speaking of statues, beasts, &c. But it is said that the writer of that book was inspired. Examine therefore candidly what evidence there is of his having been inspired. The pretension is entitled to your inquiry, because millions believe it. On the other hand you are astronomer enough to know how contrary it is to the law of nature that a body revolving on its axis as the earth does, should have stopped, should not by that sudden stoppage have prostrated animals, trees, buildings, and should after a certain time have resumed its revolution, & that without a second general prostration. Is this arrest of the earth's motion, or the evidence which affirms it, most within the law of probabilities? You will next read the New Testament. It is the history of a personage called Jesus. Keep in your eye the opposite pretensions: 1, of those who say he was begotten by God, born of a virgin, suspended & reversed the laws of nature at will, & ascended bodily into heaven; and 2, of those who say he was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart, enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions to divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition, by being gibbeted, according to the Roman law, which punished the first commission of that offence by whipping, & the second by exile, or death in fureâ. ...Do not be frightened from this inquiry by any fear of its consequences. If it ends in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise, and the love of others which it will procure you... In fine, I repeat, you must lay aside all prejudice on both sides, and neither believe nor reject anything, because any other persons, or description of persons, have rejected or believed it... I forgot to observe, when speaking of the New Testament, that you should read all the histories of Christ, as well of those whom a council of ecclesiastics have decided for us, to be Pseudo-evangelists, as those they named Evangelists. Because these Pseudo-evangelists pretended to inspiration, as much as the others, and you are to judge their pretensions by your own reason, and not by the reason of those ecclesiastics. Most of these are lost... [Letter to his nephew, Peter Carr, advising him in matters of religion, 1787]

Discover the force of the skies O Men: once recognised it can be put to use.

It seems impossible that you could get something from nothing, but the fact that once there was nothing and now there is a universe is evident proof that you can.

For many years I have been a night watchman of the Milky Way galaxy.

...look up and see the madness organized in the stars.

Your time is the most precious thing in this world.

Did you know that the center of a Protostar (the star in the middle of a nebula) is called a Nuclear Furnace? So you can call that the star's "heart." The heart of a star is a furnace. Not much unlike the human heart.

This century will be called Darwin's century. He was one of the greatest men who ever touched this globe. He has explained more of the phenomena of life than all of the religious teachers. Write the name of Charles Darwin on the one hand and the name of every theologian who ever lived on the other, and from that name has come more light to the world than from all of those. His doctrine of evolution, his doctrine of the survival of the fittest, his doctrine of the origin of species, has removed in every thinking mind the last vestige of orthodox Christianity. He has not only stated, but he has demonstrated, that the inspired writer knew nothing of this world, nothing of the origin of man, nothing of geology, nothing of astronomy, nothing of nature; that the Bible is a book written by ignorance--at the instigation of fear. Think of the men who replied to him. Only a few years ago there was no person too ignorant to successfully answer Charles Darwin, and the more ignorant he was the more cheerfully he undertook the task. He was held up to the ridicule, the scorn and contempt of the Christian world, and yet when he died, England was proud to put his dust with that of her noblest and her grandest. Charles Darwin conquered the intellectual world, and his doctrines are now accepted facts. His light has broken in on some of the clergy, and the greatest man who to-day occupies the pulpit of one of the orthodox churches, Henry Ward Beecher, is a believer in the theories of Charles Darwin--a man of more genius than all the clergy of that entire church put together. ...The church teaches that man was created perfect, and that for six thousand years he has degenerated. Darwin demonstrated the falsity of this dogma. He shows that man has for thousands of ages steadily advanced; that the Garden of Eden is an ignorant myth; that the doctrine of original sin has no foundation in fact; that the atonement is an absurdity; that the serpent did not tempt, and that man did not 'fall.' Charles Darwin destroyed the foundation of orthodox Christianity. There is nothing left but faith in what we know could not and did not happen. Religion and science are enemies. One is a superstition; the other is a fact. One rests upon the false, the other upon the true. One is the result of fear and faith, the other of investigation and reason.

When you organize extraordinary missions, you attract people of extraordinary talent who might not have been inspired by or attracted to the goal of saving the world from cancer or hunger or pestilence.

If the people of Europe had known as much of astronomy and geology when the bible was introduced among them, as they do now, there never could have been one believer in the doctrine of inspiration. If the writers of the various parts of the bible had known as much about the sciences as is now known by every intelligent man, the book never could have been written. It was produced by ignorance, and has been believed and defended by its author. It has lost power in the proportion that man has gained knowledge. A few years ago, this book was appealed to in the settlement of all scientific questions; but now, even the clergy confess that in such matters, it has ceased to speak with the voice of authority. For the establishment of facts, the word of man is now considered far better than the word of God. In the world of science, Jehovah was superseded by Copernicus, Galileo, and Kepler. All that God told Moses, admitting the entire account to be true, is dust and ashes compared to the discoveries of Descartes, Laplace, and Humboldt. In matters of fact, the bible has ceased to be regarded as a standard. Science has succeeded in breaking the chains of theology. A few years ago, Science endeavored to show that it was not inconsistent with the bible. The tables have been turned, and now, Religion is endeavoring to prove that the bible is not inconsistent with Science. The standard has been changed.

As astronomy is the daughter of idleness, geometry is the daughter of property, and if it were a question of poetry we would likely find that she is the daughter of love.

From that day on, I began to think of people not as the masters of space and time but as participants in a great cosmic chain of being, with a direct genetic link across species both living and extinct, extending back nearly four billion years to the earliest single-celled organisms on Earth.

His laws changed all of physics and astronomy. His laws made it possible to calculate the mass of the sun and planets. The way it's done is immensely beautiful. If you know the orbital period of any planet, say, Jupiter or the Earth and you know its distance to the Sun; you can calculate the mass of the Sun. Doesn't this sound like magic? We can carry this one step further - if you know the orbital period of one of Jupiter's bright moons, discovered by Galileo in 1609, and you know the distance between Jupiter and that moon, you can calculate the mass of Jupiter. Therefore, if you know the orbital period of the moon around the Earth (it's 27.32 days), and you know the mean distance between the Earth and the moon (it's about 200,039 miles), then you can calculate to a high degree of accuracy the mass of the Earth. … But Newton's laws reach far beyond our solar system. They dictate and explain the motion of stars, binary stars, star clusters, galaxies and even clusters of galaxies. And Newton's laws deserve credit for the 20th century discovery of what we call dark matter. His laws are beautiful. Breathtakingly simple and incredibly powerful at the same time. They explain so much and the range of phenomena they clarify is mind boggling. By bringing together the physics of motion, of interaction between objects and of planetary movements, Newton brought a new kind of order to astronomical measurements, showing how, what had been a jumble of confused observations made through the centuries were all interconnected.

The Greeks made Space the subject-matter of a science of supreme simplicity and certainty. Out of it grew, in the mind of classical antiquity, the idea of pure science. Geometry became one of the most powerful expressions of that sovereignty of the intellect that inspired the thought of those times. At a later epoch, when the intellectual despotism of the Church, which had been maintained through the Middle Ages, had crumbled, and a wave of scepticism threatened to sweep away all that had seemed most fixed, those who believed in Truth clung to Geometry as to a rock, and it was the highest ideal of every scientist to carry on his science 'more geometrico.

The future of the next generation relies on astronomers obtaining a full understanding of the rapidly changing human environmental conditions and the halting of biologically toxic corporate government policies. The overloading of the electromagnetic environment is one of these disastrous policies that must stop.

philosophical inquiries (the reflections of specially trained observers on the nature of their own patterns of thought) or the insights of great novelists, such as Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Fyodor Dostoevsky, and Leo Tolstoy. Those are the readings that inspired my first years at Harvard. But, as I learned from Ernst Kris, neither trained introspection nor creative insights would lead to the systematic accretion of knowledge needed for the foundation of a science of mind. That sort of foundation requires more than insight, it requires experimentation. Thus, it was the remarkable successes of experimental science in astronomy, physics, and chemistry that spurred students of mind to devise experimental

Each religion makes scores of purportedly factual assertions about everything from the creation of the universe to the afterlife. But on what grounds can believers presume to know that these assertions are true? The reasons they give are various, but the ultimate justification for most religious people’s beliefs is a simple one: we believe what we believe because our holy scriptures say so. But how, then, do we know that our holy scriptures are factually accurate? Because the scriptures themselves say so. Theologians specialize in weaving elaborate webs of verbiage to avoid saying anything quite so bluntly, but this gem of circular reasoning really is the epistemological bottom line on which all 'faith' is grounded. In the words of Pope John Paul II: 'By the authority of his absolute transcendence, God who makes himself known is also the source of the credibility of what he reveals.' It goes without saying that this begs the question of whether the texts at issue really were authored or inspired by God, and on what grounds one knows this. 'Faith' is not in fact a rejection of reason, but simply a lazy acceptance of bad reasons. 'Faith' is the pseudo-justification that some people trot out when they want to make claims without the necessary evidence. But of course we never apply these lax standards of evidence to the claims made in the other fellow’s holy scriptures: when it comes to religions other than one’s own, religious people are as rational as everyone else. Only our own religion, whatever it may be, seems to merit some special dispensation from the general standards of evidence. And here, it seems to me, is the crux of the conflict between religion and science. Not the religious rejection of specific scientific theories (be it heliocentrism in the 17th century or evolutionary biology today); over time most religions do find some way to make peace with well-established science. Rather, the scientific worldview and the religious worldview come into conflict over a far more fundamental question: namely, what constitutes evidence. Science relies on publicly reproducible sense experience (that is, experiments and observations) combined with rational reflection on those empirical observations. Religious people acknowledge the validity of that method, but then claim to be in the possession of additional methods for obtaining reliable knowledge of factual matters — methods that go beyond the mere assessment of empirical evidence — such as intuition, revelation, or the reliance on sacred texts. But the trouble is this: What good reason do we have to believe that such methods work, in the sense of steering us systematically (even if not invariably) towards true beliefs rather than towards false ones? At least in the domains where we have been able to test these methods — astronomy, geology and history, for instance — they have not proven terribly reliable. Why should we expect them to work any better when we apply them to problems that are even more difficult, such as the fundamental nature of the universe? Last but not least, these non-empirical methods suffer from an insuperable logical problem: What should we do when different people’s intuitions or revelations conflict? How can we know which of the many purportedly sacred texts — whose assertions frequently contradict one another — are in fact sacred?

If the Pentateuch is not inspired in its astronomy, geology, geography, history or philosophy, if it is not inspired concerning slavery, polygamy, war, law, religious or political liberty, or the rights of men, women and children, what is it inspired in, or about? The unity of God?—that was believed long before Moses was born. Special providence?—that has been the doctrine of ignorance in all ages. The rights of property?—theft was always a crime. The sacrifice of animals?—that was a custom thousands of years before a Jew existed. The sacredness of life?—there have always been laws against murder. The wickedness of perjury?—truthfulness has always been a virtue. The beauty of chastity?—the Pentateuch does not teach it. Thou shalt worship no other God?—that has been the burden of all religions.

The antidote, in so far as it is a matter of individual psychology, is to be found in history, biology, astronomy, and all those studies which, without destroying self-respect, enable the individual to see himself in his proper perspective. What is needed is not this or that specific piece of information, but such knowledge as inspires a conception of the ends of human life as a whole: art and history, acquaintance with the lives of heroic individuals, and some understanding of the strangely accidental and ephemeral position of man in the cosmos - all this touched with an emotion of pride in what is distinctively human, the power to see and to know, to feel magnanimously and to think with understanding. It is from large perceptions combined with impersonal emotion that wisdom most readily springs.

We are made of star material, and every atom of matter on Earth originated in the core of a star.

Sky is not the limit

World, do what you wish with him, but remember, he will always be mine.

There’s a difference between visiting a place and experiencing a place.

I wish to never stop working on the things I love.

The destruction of a creation to create isn’t true creation.

Could it be that this will be my greatest downfall?

Indulgence is a comfort, not a solution.

Everything matters and nothing matters.

Nothing is ever simple in this world and is unlikely to be so in any other for that matter.

The narrower your mind, the narrower your life will be.

I am but a single coin in a chest of billions.

Shake the hands of those you hate, and you will thank me

Empathy is the greatest good of all.

To fix internal woes, love externally.

The Man of All is the greatest man you can be.

If my ultimate sin is him then I will spend an eternity in hell.

There’s always work to be done for the furtherance of philosophy.

If angels do exist, then They are my angels.

My faith is strongest when the night sky is clear.

The greatest mistake we humans make is thinking we know all there is to know. The truth is; we know nothing.

Does it bother me that in my lifetime I’ll never get to travel to the furthest reaches of The Milky Way and beyond? Hell yes it does, although Jesse, The Philosophy, and the followers of The Philosophy will be there to see it on my behalf I hope.

I compared what was really known about the stars with the account of creation as told in Genesis. I found that the writer of the inspired book had no knowledge of astronomy -- that he was as ignorant as a Choctaw chief -- as an Eskimo driver of dogs. Does any one imagine that the author of Genesis knew anything about the sun -- its size? that he was acquainted with Sirius, the North Star, with Capella, or that he knew anything of the clusters of stars so far away that their light, now visiting our eyes, has been traveling for two million years? If he had known these facts would he have said that Jehovah worked nearly six days to make this world, and only a part of the afternoon of the fourth day to make the sun and moon and all the stars? Yet millions of people insist that the writer of Genesis was inspired by the Creator of all worlds. Now, intelligent men, who are not frightened, whose brains have not been paralyzed by fear, know that the sacred story of creation was written by an ignorant savage. The story is inconsistent with all known facts, and every star shining in the heavens testifies that its author was an uninspired barbarian. I admit that this unknown writer was sincere, that he wrote what he believed to be true -- that he did the best he could. He did not claim to be inspired -- did not pretend that the story had been told to him by Jehovah. He simply stated the "facts" as he understood them. After I had learned a little about the stars I concluded that this writer, this "inspired" scribe, had been misled by myth and legend, and that he knew no more about creation than the average theologian of my day. In other words, that he knew absolutely nothing. And here, allow me to say that the ministers who are answering me are turning their guns in the wrong direction. These reverend gentlemen should attack the astronomers. They should malign and vilify Kepler, Copernicus, Newton, Herschel and Laplace. These men were the real destroyers of the sacred story. Then, after having disposed of them, they can wage a war against the stars, and against Jehovah himself for having furnished evidence against the truthfulness of his book.

You never know what will spark a student's interest and feed the flame of learning. For me, all subjects are connected: writing, reading, science, art, music, math, social studies. By presenting myself as a writer with wide ranging passions - for astronomy, volcanology, art, music, history, and community service - I hope to inspire not only budding writers but also budding scientists, artists, activists...

It is conventional wisdom now that anything built by the government will be a disaster. But the two "Voyager" spacecraft were built by the government (in partnership with that other bugaboo, academia). They came in at cost, on time, and vastly exceeded their design specifications--as well as the fondest dreams of their makers. Seeking not to control, threaten, wound, or destroy, these elegant machines represented the exploratory part of our nature set free to roam the Solar System and beyond. This kind of technology, the treasures it uncovers freely available to all humans everywhere, has been, over the last few decades, one of the few activities of the United States admired as much by those who abhor many of its policies as by those who agree with it on every issue. "Voyager" cost each American less than a penny a year from launch to Neptune encounter. Missions to the planets are one of those things--and I mean this not just for the United States, but for the human species--that we do best.

But Alfonso was no mere historian. Living long before the modern divide into “two cultures”—the sciences and the humanities—he was a renaissance man avant la lettre, multifaceted and as committed to the sciences as to the arts, and it is here, above all, that the deepest roots of the image of the Wise King are revealed. Muslim models of rulership largely inspired his fascination with the “philosophy of nature,” especially with the related fields of astronomy, astrology, and magic. Some of these models were very old, harkening back to the golden days of the caliphate in Baghdad. There, in the ninth and tenth centuries, the caliphs of the Abbasid dynasty—anxious to soak up the ancient Greek learning of the Hellenistic world that they were conquering—had founded a school of translation that came to be known as the House of Wisdom.

The rats at the door had gone away. I drank another bottle of wine. To think I was once rich. I once had money. I had everything but something. I used to think that all people desire to be cared for; some are so used to it that they take it for granted, others, who never feel it, desire it so much that they constantly need it. So much in fact, that when they don’t receive it they have outbursts, and in the end they wind up pushing away those people who in the end would have cared for them as their heart desired within its innermost depths. So they are always alone, always on the edge of society, within it, but at the same time, apart from it. They are like spectators watching with envy the dance of mankind, wishing for that one feeling that only another’s love can bring. A whisper that speaks to one and only one and says: “You truly are worth something.” They never know that feeling that shines on some. So they cease to expect and begin looking elsewhere for that…wonderful whisper of… War. Love almost seems like war. The ancient Greeks used to say, ‘Love as if you will one day hate.’ I used to think that meant something very pessimistic, that love was not real. But really, man is just an animal anyway. It’s not just about that though, the Greeks meant more. It’s like, ‘Live as if you will one day die.’ Do not take for granted life, and for the Greeks, do not take for granted your love. After all, it really is something special. Even if it doesn’t last, it’s the moment that matters. How cliché, but the problem with most men is that they learn words, rather than the concepts that the words signify. And life, death, love, are these not the most important things, those which a man should learn before all else. And the moment…what of this, even in misery it still matters. But all we learn are words and a way to be. God I love wine.

He lay under the great bearskin and stared out of the window at the stars of spring, no longer frosty and metallic, but as if they had been new washed and had swollen with the moisture. It was a lovely evening, without rain or cloud. The sky between the stars was of the deepest and fullest velvet. Framed in the thick western window, Alderbaran and Betelgeuse were racing Sirius over the horizon, the hunting dog-star looking back to his master Orion, who had not yet heaved himself above the rim. In at the window came also the unfolding scent of benighted flowers, for the currants, the wild cherries, the plums and the hawthorn were already in bloom, and no less than five nightingales within earshot were holding a contest of beauty among the bowery, the looming trees...He watched out at the stars in a kind of trance. Soon it would be the summer again, when he could sleep on the battlements and watch these stars hovering as close as moths above his face and, in the Milky Way at least, with something of the mothy pollen. They would be at the same time so distant that unutterable thoughts of space and eternity would baffle themselves in his sighing breast, and he would imagine to himself how he was falling upward higher and higher among them, never reaching, never ending, leaving and losing everything in the tranquil speed of space.

And maybe it had to do with all the murders lately, but death was on her mind and what she had so far in regard to her graduation talk was not exactly what you would call inspiring. Life in a nutshell: we’re born, we suffer, and then we die. Heartache and grief and loneliness chase us every day, the kind of love we long for is never quite within our reach, justice eludes us, and in the end, meaning is nothing but an illusion. After all, life is an anomaly, the exception, not the norm. Death is the natural state of affairs both here and everywhere else we know of in the universe—and it’s on its way to reasserting itself. All the evidence from evolutionary biology, astrophysics, astronomy, all the theorizing in statistics and probability make it clear there’s no possible way intelligent life exists anywhere else other than on earth. Any other view is either wishful thinking or a carefully cultivated blindness. Death is the default setting of the universe. The end of life on this planet would be the end of life everywhere. And that day is coming.

Mars One has the power to show people around the globe what is possible if we just all work on one goal. No human has left Earth’s orbit since 1972 and no one ever ploughed beyond the moon into deep space. It’s finally time to inspire the world and make the next giant leap for mankind.

What J. S. Bach gained from his Lutheranism to inform his music, what Jonathan Edwards took from the Reformed tradition to orient his philosophy, what A. H. Francke learned from German Pietism to inspire the University of Halle’s research into Sanskrit and Asian literatures, what Jacob van Ruisdael gained from his seventeenth-century Dutch Calvinism to shape his painting, what Thomas Chalmers took from Scottish Presbyterianism to inspire his books on astronomy and political economy, what Abraham Kuyper gained from pietistic Dutch Calvinism to back his educational, political, and communications labors of the late nineteenth century, what T. S. Eliot took from high-church Anglicanism as a basis for his cultural criticism, what Evelyn Waugh found for his novels in twentieth-century Catholicism, what Luci Shaw, Shirley Nelson, Harold Fickett, and Evangeline Paterson found to encourage creative writing from other forms of Christianity after they left dispensationalism behind — precious few fundamentalists or their evangelical successors have ever found in the theological insights of twentieth-century dispensationalism, Holiness, or Pentecostalism. As

Eva, my love, It’s over. One way or another, everything comes to an end. It’s all over some day. That’s perhaps one of the most fascinating truths we know about the entire universe. The stars die, the galaxies die, the planets die. And people die too. I’ve never been a believer, but the day I became interested in astronomy, I think I put aside all that was left of my fear of death. I’d realized that in comparison to the universe, a human being, a single human being, me … is infinitely small. Well, I’m not writing this letter to deliver a profound religious or philosophical lecture. I’m writing to tell you “farewell.” I was just talking to you on the phone. I can still hear the sound of your voice. I imagine you, before my eyes … a beautiful image, a lovely memory I will keep until the end. At this very moment, reading this letter, you know that I am dead. There are things that I want you to know. As I leave for Africa, I’m aware of what’s waiting for me. I even have the feeling that this trip could bring about my death, but it’s something that I have to experience, in spite of everything. I wasn’t born to sit in an armchair. I’m not like that. Correction: I wasn’t like that … I’m not going to Africa just as a journalist, I’m going above all on a political mission, and that’s why I think this trip might lead to my death. This is the first time I’ve written to you knowing exactly what to say: I love you, I love you, love you, love you. I want you to know that. I want you to know that I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone. I want you to know I mean that seriously. I want you to remember me but not grieve for me. If I truly mean something to you, and I know that I do, you will probably suffer when you learn I am dead. But if I really mean something to you, don’t suffer, I don’t want that. Don’t forget me, but go on living. Live your life. Pain will fade with time, even if that’s hard to imagine right now. Live in peace, my dearest love; live, love, hate, and keep fighting. … I had a lot of faults, I know, but some good qualities as well, I hope. But you, Eva, you inspired such love in me that I was never able to express it to you. … Straighten up, square your shoulders, hold your head high. Okay? Take care of yourself, Eva. Go have a cup of coffee. It’s over. Thank you for the beautiful times we had. You made me very happy. Adieu. I kiss you goodbye, Eva. From Stieg, with love.

He would tell her this, that nothing departs for good, that there is cause for hope-even a comet on a million-year orbit will cross the sky again-…

The modernist reaction to the Enlightenment came in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution, whose brutalizing effects revealed that modern life had not become as mathematically perfect, or as certain, rational, or enlightened, as advances in the eighteenth century had led people to expect. Truth was not always beautiful, nor was it always readily recognized. It was frequently hidden from view. Moreover, the human mind was governed not only by reason but also by irrational emotion. As astronomy and physics inspired the Enlightenment, so biology inspired Modernism. Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species introduced the idea that human beings are not created uniquely by an all-powerful God but are biological creatures that evolved from simpler animal ancestors. In his later books, Darwin elaborated on these arguments and pointed out that the primary biological function of any organism is to reproduce itself. Since we evolved from simpler animals, we must have the same instinctual behavior that is evident in other animals. As a result, sex must also be central to human behavior. This new view led to a reexamination in art of the biological nature of human existence, as evident in Édouard Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’Herbe of 1863, perhaps the first truly modernist painting from both a thematic and stylistic point of view. Manet’s painting, at once beautiful and shocking in its depiction, reveals a theme central to the modernist agenda: the complex relationship between the sexes and between fantasy and reality.

Traditionally, Apollo and the nine goddesses known as the Muses make their home on the mountain in Greece called Parnassus. Believed to inspire creativity, they are Calliope (epic poetry), Clio (history), Euterpe (lyric poetry), Thalia (comedy and pastoral poetry), Melpomene (tragedy), Terpsichore (dance), Erato (love poetry), Polyhymnia (sacred poetry), and Urania (astronomy). Exclusively deities of performance, their blessing was solicited before any play or public recitation. (There were no Muses for sculptors, painters, and architects, regarded in Attic Greece as mere workmen, too lowly for divine patronage.) During the eighteenth century, students from the religious schools of the Latin Quarter, panting up this hill at the southern limit of Paris, may have looked back at the city spreading along the banks of the Seine and thought themselves masters of the known world. Through the haze of wine purchased from the locals, this unpromising landfill, formed from the rubble of urban expansion and fertilized by the corpses of the nameless dead, could have felt like their own Parnassus, an illusion they celebrated by reciting or improvising verse. Still then nameless, the hill first appeared on a map, the Lutetia Parisiorum vulgo of Johannes Janssonius, in 1657, which identified the track leading to its summit as the Chemin d’Enfer: the Road to Hell. The district looked doomed to remain a wasteland until, in 1667, Louis XIV chose to build an observatory there. (Charles II of England, envious, immediately commissioned his own for Greenwich.) Sometime during the next fifty years, it became officially Montparnasse, since in 1725 the city annexed it under that name. A road was laid along the ridge. Tunneling below the unstable topsoil, quarrymen mined the fine-grained limestone from which a greater Paris would be built, and where soon the Muses, though far from home, would again be heard.

My hope is that evidence for the exquisite fine-tuning observed at all astronomical levels, from the farthest reaches of the cosmos to the ground beneath our feet, arouses a profound sense of awe and wonder. My greater hope is that this awe and wonder will inspire readers to ponder the deep questions raised by a close-up glimpse of nature's unfolding story.

The moon is a wonder. Not only is it the largest and brightest object in the sky, but, just like the stars, it has always inspired awe in many people. From scientists, to the mythologists, to regular people like me, who look up and wonder what the significance is on nights like this. It’s always radiated an air of mystery and magic, love and, obviously, unattainable beauty. It’s been used to measure time. The waxing and waning have made it a symbol of change in cycles around the world. One cycle being the constant alternation of birth and death, creation and destruction. The moon belongs to things that transgress the boundaries of astronomy, astrology, and even religion. I feel a connection to the moon in the myths and legends. The moon gives me a friend when I feel like I have no one—when I am lonely. On nights when things seem bleak, as if nothing in life will ever go according to plan, staring up at the moon brings me a sense of peace. Because when I stare up at the sky that’s lit up by the stars and silver light, I know I’m not the only one. I know I’m not the only one who feels invisible or lonely. For all intents and purposes, it feels like I am the moon, and Endymion is the sun. Our non-present love affair was condemned from the beginning.

My achievements in science came about because I knew what I wanted to do, and I found professional colleagues among helpful, gentle astronomers. I was never discouraged by others who were sometimes discouraging. Instead, I insisted on working on problems outside the main stream of astronomy so that I could work at my own pace and not be pressured by bandwagons. I do not offer this as an example for you, but only to show that there can be diverse approaches to science. There must be. I hope some of you will be able to devise your own paths through the complex sociology of science. Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting. You can do it, too.

I will live as long as the world needs me.

Once my mission is completed, I will be ready to leave this existence and become whatever I am destined to transcend as.

Those who enforce laws must also abide by them.

To divide is to regress.

I learned to love The Unknown.

To make history, first you must learn history.

To have knowledge is to have freedom.

Those who wish to eradicate evil are those who create it.

Reality always manages to make things much worse than that of which imagination can conjure.

I, you, we create reality.

Clouded are we to the truth for truth itself is not real.

I am one human amongst seven billion standing on a small planet in a quiet corner of a galaxy forgotten between countless other galaxies that make up the ever-expanding cosmos that’s so incomprehensibly immense that it would take me an eternity to understand its ultimate complexity.

The widest view is the clearest.

The moment we realise our place as insignificant, we can use our human power of the mind to build something of significance and this is what I intend to achieve; all that I wish to do is to create to contribute and to be remembered for my contribution to humanity’s progression.

Creation is the only progression there is.

The most foolish is he who underestimates another’s abilities.

My life is a small sacrifice for the betterment of others and for the furtherance of humanity.

I’ve known him so long that we are now but one and the same.

We will change the world together.

Allowing him to flourish is killing my chance to flower.

We dance the dance of death with our hands tied behind our backs.

Look in the mirror and ask yourself if you are the best version of you.

Those closest to you can be your greatest enemies.

My dream is all I have and all I am.

My end will come when he is able to live without me.

The day of my death will not be the day of his.

Love is learning until you have learnt for so long that learning becomes your love.

The evilness of doubt crept ever so closer to my heart.

Many have tried and all have failed; this world will never be ruled by one.

Only a fool will try and take over this world.

You must explore beyond that of any other before you; you must seek new discoveries; then come ever so closer to revealing the ultimate mystery.

We have explored this world and now is the time to explore the world in which our world resides.

We are still yet at the very beginning of humanity’s greatest journey.

To live in a place is to live by their values.

Only the fool forces all to believe his beliefs.

Go and explore worlds, but just know this; you may find something that will question your very existence and all you presently know and believe.

Hold out your hand and shake the hand of your opponents just as sincerely as your supporters.

Can you see the task we have been set? The ultimate exploration is before us, waiting for its initiation.

The time has come to explore beyond all we know.