“This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.”

— Henry David Thoreau

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Henry David Thoreau 385

1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitio… 1817–1862

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“The Earth is cylindrical, three times as wide as it is deep, and only the upper part is inhabited. But this Earth is isolated in space, and the sky is a complete sphere in the center of which is located, unsupported, our cylinder, the Earth, situated at an equal distance from all the points of the sky.”

Anaximander (-610–-547 BC) pre-Socratic Greek philosopher

As quoted in "Science Attests the Accuracy of the Bible" in The Watchtower (1 October 1980)

“There's no point in going out into space if the future that we'll see there is a sterile future living in tin cans. We have to able to recreate in space habitats which are as beautiful as earth-like as the loveliest parts of planet Earth and we can do that.”

Gerard O'Neill (1927–1992) Physicist, author, and inventor

The High Frontier (1976)

“There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.”

Christopher Morley book The Haunted Bookshop

Source: The Haunted Bookshop

“People will inhabit places, but increasingly the economy inhabits a space.”

Kevin Kelly (1952) American author and editor

Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems and the Economic World (1995), New Rules for the New Economy: 10 Radical Strategies for a Connected World (1999)

“If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly; if they be na inhabited, what a waste of space.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

On other stars
Attributed by John Burroughs on the first page of his 1920 book Accepting The Universe
Attributed by Carl Sagan at a November 20, 1972 symposium on "Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man", held at Boston University
[Berendzen, Richard, ed., Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man, 1973, NASA Scientific and Technical Information Office, Washington, DC, LCCN 73-600150]
"Life Beyond Earth and the Mind of Man 1975", Google Video, c. 0:02:50, 2006-09-11 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8949469271181885482&q=owner%3Anara+type%3Anasa, Edited version of symposium, released by National Archives, under Google Video partnership http://www.archives.gov/google/.
Attributed
Variant: A sad spectacle. If they be inhabited, what a scope for misery and folly. It they be not inhabited, what a waste of space.

“We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged.”

Carl Sagan (1934–1996) American astrophysicist, cosmologist, author and science educator

Cosmos: A Personal Voyage (1990 Update), The Shores of the Cosmic Ocean [Episode 1]
Context: We on Earth have just awakened to the great oceans of space and time from which we have emerged. We are the legacy of 15 billion years of cosmic evolution. We have a choice: We can enhance life and come to know the universe that made us, or we can squander our 15 billion-year heritage in meaningless self-destruction. What happens in the first second of the next cosmic year depends on what we do, here and now, with our intelligence and our knowledge of the cosmos.

“Therefore, the inhabitants of other stars — of whatever sort these inhabitants might be – bear no comparative relationship to the inhabitants of the earth (istius mundi ). [That is true] even if, with respect to the goal of the universe, that entire region bears to this entire region a certain comparative relationship which is hidden to us — so that in this way the inhabitants of this earth or region bear, through the medium of the whole region, a certain mutual relationship to those other inhabitants. (By comparison, the particular parts of the fingers of a hand bear, through the medium of the hand, a comparative relationship to a food; and the particular parts of the foot [bear], through the medium of the foot, [a comparative relationship] to a hand — so that all [members] are comparatively related to the whole animal.) Hence, since the entire region is unknown to us, those inhabitants remain altogether unknown.”

Nicholas of Cusa book De Docta Ignorantia

trans. Jasper Hopkins (Minneapolis: Arthur J Banning Press, 1990), 119 – 20.
De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) (1440)

“The point, being indivisible, occupies no space. That which occupies no space is nothing.”

Leonardo Da Vinci (1452–1519) Italian Renaissance polymath

The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci (1883), II Linear Perspective
Context: The point, being indivisible, occupies no space. That which occupies no space is nothing. The limiting surface of one thing is the beginning of another.

“Who owns the whole rainy, stony earth? Death.
Who owns all of space? Death.”

Ted Hughes book Crow

"Examination at the Womb-door"
Crow (1970)

“Man will not always stay on Earth; the pursuit of light and space will lead him to penetrate the bounds of the atmosphere, timidly at first, but in the end to conquer the whole of solar space.”

Konstantin Tsiolkovsky (1857–1935) Russian and Soviet rocket scientist and pioneer of the astronautic theory

Original: (ru) Человечество не останется вечно на земле, но в погоне за светом и пространством сначала робко проникнет за пределы атмосферы, а затем завоюет себе все околосолнечное пространство
Source: from Воздухоплавание в наше время // Современный мир. — 1912. — № 7. — С. 260. (and His epitaph)
Source: Mentioned in Beyond the Planet Earth, by K. Tsiolkovsky (1920), translated by K. Syers (1960), reviewed by M. G. Whillans, Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada, Vol. 55 (1961), p. 144 http://articles.adsabs.harvard.edu//full/seri/JRASC/0055//0000144.000.html

“This whole earth in which we inhabit is but a point is space.”

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Henry David Thoreau 385

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