“Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”

— Eric Hoffer

On the first moon-landing, as quoted in The New York Times (21 July 1969)

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Eric Hoffer 240

American philosopher 1898–1983

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“There are landscapes in which we feel above us not sky but space. Something larger, deeper than sky is sensed, is seen, although in such settings the sky is invariably immense. There is a place between the cerebrum and the stars where sky stops and space commenses, and should we find ourselves on a particular prairie or mountaintop at a particular hour […] our relationship with sky thins and loosens while our connection with space becomes as solid as bone.”

Tom Robbins Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas

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“Unless we can trace our lineage to the original humans and find that we live where they lived, we are all international migrants. Furthermore, we are all wanderers. We symbolically carry our homes on our backs, like turtles, snails, and crustaceans—for the meanings and associations of home are always with us and affect our orientation in space and time, and how we negotiate our way through the world.”

Michael Allen Fox (1940)

Home: A Very Short Introduction https://books.google.it/books?id=CyShDQAAQBAJ&pg=PT0 (Oxford University Press, 2017), ch. 7.

“This year we take our vacation somewhere else. Where is there where Americans aren’t likely to be stoned by a howling mob? Spain, Greece? No, got to be out of range of the stench from the Med.
Looks like we might as well stay home.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

May “BLANKET”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

“We put a monkey up in space / and I know exactly how he felt / looking at a lattice work of stars / missing his brothers back home too much for a postcard”

Blake Schwarzenbach (1967) American singer

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“After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.”

Charles Lindbergh (1902–1974) American aviator, author, inventor, explorer, and social activist

Autobiography of Values (1978)
Context: I grow aware of various forms of man and of myself. I am form and I am formless, I am life and I am matter, mortal and immortal. I am one and many — myself and humanity in flux. I extend a multiple of ways in experience in space. I am myself now, lying on my back in the jungle grass, passing through the ether between satellites and stars. My aging body transmits an ageless life stream. Molecular and atomic replacement change life's composition. Molecules take part in structure and in training, countless trillions of them. After my death, the molecules of my being will return to the earth and sky. They came from the stars. I am of the stars.

“What are the stars but points in the body of God where we insert the healing needles of our terror and longing?”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Gravity's Rainbow (1973)

“Here we are up in Caribou, which is my home as well as yours, but when you think about your home, you usually think about your house, your neighborhood, and your family, and when you look at this fragile blue ball from outer space, that’s home too. It’s everybody’s home.”

Jessica Meir (1977) Swedish-American marine biologist and astronaut

Source: As quoted in [Burns, Christopher, Astronaut from Aroostook County will soon go on her 1st spaceflight, https://bangordailynews.com/2019/04/17/news/aroostook/astronaut-from-aroostook-county-will-soon-go-on-her-1st-spaceflight/, 26 April 2019, Bangor Daily News, April 17, 2019]

“Should there really be suns in the whole infinite space, they can be at approximately the same distance from one another, or distributed over galaxies, hence would be in infinite quantities, and consequently the whole sky should be as bright as the sun. Clearly, each line which can conceivably be drawn from our eye will necessarily end on one of the stars and each point on the sky would send us starlight, that is, sunlight.”

Heinrich Wilhelm Matthäus Olbers (1758–1840) German physician and astronomer

Sind wirklich im ganzen unendlichen Raum Sonnen vorhanden, sie mögen nun in ungefähr gleichen Abständen von einander, oder in Milchstrassen-Systeme vertheilt sein, so wird ihre Menge unendlich, und da müsste der ganze Himmel ebenso hell sein, wie die Sonne. Denn jede Linie, die ich mir von unserm Auge gezogen denken kann, wird nothwendig auf irgend einen Fixstern treffen, und also müßte uns jeder Punkt am Himmel Fixsternlicht, also Sonnenlicht zusenden.
Olbers' paradox, expressed in [Ueber die Durchsichtigkeit des Weltraums, Astronomisches Jahrbuch für das Jahr 1826, J. Bode. Berlin, Späthen 1823, 110-121]

“It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I suppose we would be monsters to a Venusian. [...] We depicted the outer space creature as something strange rather than as a monster. He was from a strange place and therefore out of place in our familiar surroundings.”

Ray Harryhausen (1920–2013) American animator

On 20 Million Miles to Earth
Harryhausen on Horror

“Our passionate preoccupation with the sky, the stars, and a God somewhere in outer space is a homing impulse. We are drawn back to where we came from.”

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