Astronomy is perhaps the science whose discoveries owe least to chance, in which human understanding appears in its whole magnitude, and through which man can best learn how small he is. Georg Christoph Lichtenberg
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other. Plato
Cosmology does, I think, affect the way that we perceive humanity’s role in nature. One thing we’ve learnt from astronomy is that the future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past. Even our sun is less than halfway through its life. Sir Martin Rees
Astronomy is one of the sublimest fields of human investigation. The mind that grasps its facts and principles receives something of the enlargement and grandeur belonging to the science itself. It is a quickener of devotion. Horace Mann
Astronomy is not the apex of science or of invention. But it is a test of the cast of temperament and mind that underlies a culture. Jacob Bronowski