Voyager Spacecraft Quotes & Sayings

I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach into outer space on the Voyager spacecraft. But that would be boasting. — Lewis Thomas

That place, called the heliopause, is one definition of the outer boundary of the Empire of the Sun. But the Voyager spacecraft will plunge on, penetrating the heliopause sometime in the middle of the twenty-first century, skimming through the ocean of space, never to enter another solar system, destined to wander through eternity far from the stellar islands and to complete its first circumnavigation of the massive center of the Milky Way a few hundred million years from now. We have embarked on epic voyages. — Carl Sagan

I am a good person. I like myself the way I am. Many people love and care about me. I have a purpose in life. I don't want to kill myself. — Leila Sales

Successful hunting, it could be said, is an act of terminal empathy: the kill depends on how successfully a hunter inserts himself into the umwelt of his prey
even to the point of disguising himself as that animal and mimicking its behavior. — John Vaillant

Climate has always changed. It always has and always will. Sea level has always changed. Ice sheets come and go. Life always changes. Extinctions of life are normal. Planet Earth is dynamic and evolving. Climate changes are cyclical and random. Through the eyes of a geologist, I would be really concerned if there were no change to Earth over time. In the light of large rapid natural climate changes, just how much do humans really change climate? — Ian Plimer

Hopefully I'll be successful with the singing, but there are so many other things I want to do, like acting. I'll do them one at a time first! — Katie Price

The high tide!" King Alfred cried.
"The high tide and the turn!
As a tide turns on the tall grey seas,
See how they waver in the trees,
How stray their spears, how knock their knees,
How wild their watchfires burn! — G.K. Chesterton

In the days of the Roman Colosseum, captured soldiers were regularly thrown to the lions. But one soldier earned a reputation for bravery and managed to save his life by a bold act. When a lion sprang toward him with lunch on its mind, the man whispered something in the lion's ear just at the last moment. The lion cowered, turned a sickly green, and then slunk back into its cage. This happened again and again, with even the empire's fiercest lions turning tail once they had heard what the man whispered. The emperor, curious to understand the man's power over these beasts, promised him his life in exchange for the secret of how he caused the lions to leave him alone. "It's simple," the soldier told the emperor. "When a lion is about to attack, I just whisper, 'After you've eaten, they're going to ask you to make a short speech.' Works every time.
— Arthur H. Bell

The phrase 'contrary to all expectations' rings through the story of the progress of human knowledge. It was 'contrary to all expectations' that the Earth was found to revolve around the sun, and not the other way round, and that a mould growing in one of Dr. Alexander Fleming's dishes was found to be capable of destroying bacteria. When in 1989 the spacecraft Voyager 2 got close enough to the planet Naptune to take detailed pictures of the surface, they were 'contrary to all expectations'. — Anthony Terence Quincey Stewart

Many people remember that when in 1977 the Voyager spacecraft was launched, opinions were canvassed as to what artefacts would be most appropriate to leave in outer space as a signal of man's cultural achievements on earth. The American astronomer Carl Sagan proposed that 'if we are to convey something of what humans are about then music has to be a part of it.' To Sagan's request for suggestions, the eminent biologist Lewis Thomas answered, 'I would send the complete works of Johann Sebastian Bach.' After a pause, he added, 'But that would be boasting. — John Eliot Gardiner