Category: Cosmos
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HAL 9000 quotes you can use at work
– Greg Gilmore I enjoy working with people. My mind is going. I can feel it. I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently. I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. This…
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“I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It’s fragile.”
– Alan Shepard (18 November 1923 – 21 July 1998) Alan Shepard was the second person and the first American in space. He later commanded the Apollo 14 mission and was the fifth person to walk on the moon. Now that’s what you call making a mark! He was recorded as saying: “I realized up…
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“93 percent stardust.”
– Nikita Gill, Your Soul Is A River Nikita Gill’s poem, from Your Soul is a River, speaks to me, unusually as I’m not a great fan of poetry. The poem goes: We have calcium in our bones, iron in our veins, carbon in our souls. and nitrogen in our brains. 93 percent stardust, with…
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“As I take man’s last step from the surface, back home for some time to come – but we believe not too long into the future – I’d like to just (say) what I believe history will record.”
– Eugene Cernan (14 March 1934 – 16 January 2017) Eugene Cernan was the last man on the moon and as he stepped into the lunar module to return to the command module in lunar orbit he said these final words: “Bob, this is Gene, and I’m on the surface; and, as I take man’s…
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“The first principle is that you must not fool yourself—and you are the easiest person to fool.”
– Richard P. Feynman (11 May 1918 – 15 Feb 1988) In 1974, Feynman delivered the Caltech commencement address on the topic of cargo cult science, which has the semblance of science, but is only pseudoscience due to a lack of “a kind of scientific integrity, a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a…
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“Planetary Chauvinism.”
– Isaac Asimov 2 January 1920 – 6 April 1992 As quoted by Gerrard O’Neill: In a roundtable TV interview, Isaac Asimov and I were asked why science-fiction writers have, almost without exception, failed to point us toward that development. Dr. Asimov’s reply was a phrase he has now become fond of using: “Planetary Chauvinism.”…
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“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.”
— Oscar (Fingal O’Fflahertie Wills) Wilde, 16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900 To many this quip, as spoken by a character in Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan subtitled A Play About a Good Woman, represents humanity’s need to aim higher and do better. It doesn’t matter where you are (or even, who you are)…
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“I am a child of the Milky Way. The night is my mother. I am made of the dust of stars. Every atom in my body was forged in a star.”
― Chet Raymo, The Soul of the Night: An Astronomical Pilgrimage Probing the depths of science and faith, scientist Chet Raymo investigates the mysteries of human spirituality and meaning contained in astronomy. Ranging through the stars and the myths humans have told about them for millennia, Raymo delves into “a pilgrimage in quest of the…
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“As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”
― Herman Melville, Moby Dick, Chapter 1 (http://www.literaturepage.com/read/mobydick-16.html) “For all its material advantages, the sedentary life has left us edgy, unfulfilled. Even after 400 generations in villages and cities, we haven’t forgotten. The open road still softly calls, like a nearly forgotten song of childhood. We invest far-off places with a certain romance. This appeal,…
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“Sometimes we focus too much on our differences, but when we all look up into space, we see the same stars and we see the same sun. It really can be unifying.”
– Anne Charlotte McClain, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, engineer and a NASA astronaut During an interview with We Are The Mighty, McClain said, “You get this overview effect where you realize how small we are and how fragile our planet is and how we’re really all in it together,” she said. “You…
Stargazing Guy 