976 – “For when the sun draws up some vapors here, or warms a plant there, it draws these and warms this as if it had nothing else to do. Even in ripening a bunch of grapes, or perhaps just a single grape, it applies itself so effectively that it could not do more even if the goal of all its affairs were just the ripening of this one grape.”

-Galileo Galilei

618 – “The Universe is probably littered with one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there’s no good reason to go into space – each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.”

–Randall Munroe

558 – “Where the telescope ends the microscope begins. Which of the two possess the larger field of vision? Choose. A bit of mold is a Pleiad of flowers; a nebula is an anthill of stars.”

–Victor Hugo

507 – “Two possibilities exist: Either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.”

–Arthur C Clarke [See Source Notes about Attribution]