“The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views.”

— David Rittenhouse

An Oration delivered February 24, 1775, before The American Philiosophical Society held at Philiadelphia, for promoting useful knowledge in [William Barton, Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, Somerset Publishers, Incorporated, 1813, 569] http://books.google.fr/books?id=L1oUAAAAQAAJ&pg=PA569

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The direct tendency of (Astronomy) is to dilate the heart with universal benevolence, and to enlarge its views." by David Rittenhouse?

David Rittenhouse 3

American astronomer 1732–1796

Related quotes

“It gives liberty and breadth to thought, to learn to judge our own epoch from the point of view of universal history, history from the point of view of geological periods, geology from the point of view of astronomy.”

Henri-Frédéric Amiel (1821–1881) Swiss philosopher and poet

20 July 1848
Journal Intime (1882), Journal entries

“[Messianic tendencies of management thought, especially scientific management had the tendency] to extend the objective, positivist approach to an ever-enlarging complex of phenomena.”

Dwight Waldo (1913–2000) American political scientist

Source: The Administrative State, 1948, p. 57 as cited in: Robert B. Denhardt, ‎Thomas J. Catlaw (2014), Theories of Public Organization, p. 72

“We have now a science called astronomy. That science has done more to enlarge the horizon of human thought than all things else.”

Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899) Union United States Army officer

The trial of Charles B. Reynolds for blasphemy (1887)
Context: We have now a science called astronomy. That science has done more to enlarge the horizon of human thought than all things else. We now live in an infinite universe. We know that the sun is a million times larger than our earth, and we know that there are other great luminaries millions of times larger than our sun. We know that there are planets so far away that light, traveling at the rate of one hundred and eighty- five thousand miles a second, requires fifteen thousand years to reach this grain of sand, this tear, we call the earth -- and we now know that all the fields of space are sown thick with constellations. If that statute had been enforced, that science would not now be the property of the human mind. That science is contrary to the Bible, and for asserting the truth you become a criminal. For what sum of money, for what amount of wealth, would the world have the science of astronomy expunged from the brain of man? We learned the story of the stars in spite of that statute.