Quotes about space
page 16

Willem de Kooning photo
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot photo
Gino Severini photo

“this complex form of realism.... totally destroys the integrity of the subject-matter... The abstract colors and forms that we portray belong to Universe outside time and space.”

Gino Severini (1883–1966) Italian painter

In his manifesto 'The Plastic Analogies of Dynanism', c. 1914; as quoted in Inventing Futurism: The Art and Politics of Artificial Optimism, by Christine Poggi, Princeton University Press, 2009, p. 218

Oliver Lodge photo

“A body can only act immediately on what it is in contact with; it must be by the action of contiguous particles—that is, practically, through a continuous medium, that force can be transmitted across space.”

Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) British physicist

The Ether of Space https://books.google.com/books?id=ycgEAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA26, p. 26
The Ether of Space (1909)

Marshall McLuhan photo

“Gutenberg made all history available as classified data: the transportable book brought the world of the dead into the space of the gentlemen's library; the telegraph brought the entire world of the living to the workman's breakfast table.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1960s, Counterblast (1969), p. 15

John F. Kennedy photo
Stanley Kubrick photo
Stanley Baldwin photo

“This is Empire Day, and we lift up our eyes beyond our immediate surroundings and our everyday tasks to behold the great inheritance which is ours. Our feet are set in a large space, and if the Titan has known moments of weariness, if our burdens are heavy, our shoulders are yet broad, and they have long been fitted to bear the vast orb of our fate.”

Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech in Hyde Park (24 May 1929), published in This Torch of Freedom (1935), p. 25. In 1902 Joseph Chamberlain said "The weary Titan staggers under the too vast orb of its fate".
1929

“Sociometric space, e. g., the rating on a scale of leadership ability of each member of a group by every other member.”

James Grier Miller (1916–2002) biologist

Living Systems: Basic Concepts (1969)

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
Colin Wilson photo
Paul Klee photo
Elon Musk photo

“[W]e propose… to deal exclusively with properties intrinsic to the space… measured within the space itself… in terms of… inner properties.”

Howard P. Robertson (1903–1961) American mathematician and physicist

Geometry as a Branch of Physics (1949)

Kevin Kelly photo

“The big will have a different kind of bigness. The network economy encourages the middle space. It supplies technology (which the industrial age could not) to nurture mid-sized wonders.”

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)

George W. Bush photo
Jerome K. Jerome photo

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Bernard Harcourt photo
Andrea Pirlo photo
Marshall McLuhan photo

“The victory over Euclidean space was not achieved by isolated individuals, but by a field of young rebels opposed to all absolutes.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Source: 1980s, Laws of Media: The New Science (with Eric McLuhan) (1988), p. 42

Iain Banks photo
Brion Gysin photo

“I may write only what I know in space: I am that I am.”

Brion Gysin (1916–1986) Canadian artist

Notes on Painting, Tuning in to the Multimedia Age, p. 96.

Hans Reichenbach photo

“Whereas the conception of space and time as a four-dimensional manifold has been very fruitful for mathematical physicists, its effect in the field of epistemology has been only to confuse the issue. Calling time the fourth dimension gives it an air of mystery. One might think that time can now be conceived as a kind of space and try in vain to add visually a fourth dimension to the three dimensions of space. It is essential to guard against such a misunderstanding of mathematical concepts. If we add time to space as a fourth dimension it does not lose any of its peculiar character as time. …Musical tones can be ordered according to volume and pitch and are thus brought into a two dimensional manifold. Similarly colors can be determined by the three basic colors red, green and blue… Such an ordering does not change either tones or colors; it is merely a mathematical expression of something that we have known and visualized for a long time. Our schematization of time as a fourth dimension therefore does not imply any changes in the conception of time. …the space of visualization is only one of many possible forms that add content to the conceptual frame. We would therefore not call the representation of the tone manifold by a plane the visual representation of the two dimensional tone manifold.”

Hans Reichenbach (1891–1953) American philosopher

The Philosophy of Space and Time (1928, tr. 1957)

Shreya Ghoshal photo
Kenneth Minogue photo
Jonathan Pearce photo

“Fabregas looking left….. this is Abou Diaby…tall, rangy…and going for goal…. OOOHHHH - What an absolute screamer! Abou Diaby! Arsenal 1, Derby County 0. A glorious strike! Found in space, cut inside worked the yard more in space and thumped it!”

Jonathan Pearce (1959) British football commentator

Abou Diaby's first goal of the season, which was best described as an "absolute screamer" by Pearce. The goal, which was followed by an Adebayor hat-trick and a Fabregas shot, helped cement Arsenal's position at the top of the Premier League summit in early September 2007.

Roger Shepard photo
Willem de Sitter photo

“This is about a deterrence effect to stop the Syrian regime targeting their own civilians. I think it would be enforceable from the Mediterranean using US French and UK military capability already out there. It would mean the aerial bombardment of Syrian civilians would stop, and it would create space for peace talks.”

Jo Cox (1974–2016) UK politician

Speaking on BBC Daily Politics show — UK 'should enforce Syria no-fly zone even if Russia vetoes UN resolution' https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/oct/12/uk-should-be-prepared-enforce-syria-no-fly-zone-russian-veto-un-isis-assad (12 October 2015)

John Frusciante photo
Dennis Kucinich photo
Stewart Brand photo
John Erskine photo
Ken Ham photo

“I’m shocked at the countless hundreds of millions of dollars that have been spent over the years in the desperate and fruitless search for extraterrestrial life… Of course, secularists are desperate to find life in outer space, as they believe that would provide evidence that life can evolve in different locations and given the supposed right conditions! The search for extraterrestrial life is really driven by man’s rebellion against God in a desperate attempt to supposedly prove evolution!… And I do believe there can’t be other intelligent beings in outer space because of the meaning of the gospel. You see, the Bible makes it clear that Adam’s sin affected the whole universe. This means that any aliens would also be affected by Adam’s sin, but because they are not Adam’s descendants, they can’t have salvation. One day, the whole universe will be judged by fire, and there will be a new heavens and earth. God’s Son stepped into history to be Jesus Christ, the “Godman,” to be our relative, and to be the perfect sacrifice for sin—the Savior of mankind. Jesus did not become the “GodKlingon” or the “GodMartian”! Only descendants of Adam can be saved. God’s Son remains the “Godman” as our Savior. In fact, the Bible makes it clear that we see the Father through the Son (and we see the Son through His Word). To suggest that aliens could respond to the gospel is just totally wrong. An understanding of the gospel makes it clear that salvation through Christ is only for the Adamic race—human beings who are all descendants of Adam.”

Ken Ham (1951) Australian young Earth creationist

"We'll find a new Earth within 20 years" http://blogs.answersingenesis.org/blogs/ken-ham/2014/07/20/well-find-a-new-earth-within-20-years/, Around the World with Ken Ham (July 20, 2014)
Around the World with Ken Ham (May 2005 - Ongoing)

Richard Stallman photo
Elon Musk photo

“Since our primary competitors [in space launch] are national governments, the enforceability of patents is questionable.”

Elon Musk (1971) South African-born American entrepreneur

[Elon Musk: The mind behind Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity ..., http://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_mind_behind_tesla_spacex_solarcity.html, 19 March 2013]

Clifford D. Simak photo
L. Ron Hubbard photo

“You are a spirit, then
a god,
full capable
of making space
and energy and time
and all things well.
And there you crouch, forgotten
to yourself and hidden from
the eyes of all
pretending there to be
a beast
that walks and eats and dies.”

L. Ron Hubbard (1911–1986) American science fiction author, philosopher, cult leader, and the founder of the Church of Scientology

"There Is No Compromise With Truth" ( a poem written in 1953 or 1954).

Michel Danino photo

“Aryabhata conceived the earth as a rotating sphere in space, which causes the apparent rising and setting of the sun. Varahamihira disagreed and Brahmagupta derided Aryabhata — but unlike medieval Europe, the intellectual climate in India was free and tolerant of dissent.”

Michel Danino (1956) Indian writer

On ancient Indian astronomers, as quoted in " Unlike medieval Europe, India’s intellectual climate was free and tolerant: Michel Danino http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-interviews-blog/unlike-medieval-europe-indias-intellectual-climate-was-free-and-tolerant-michel-danino/", The Times of India (9 February 2015)

Paul Thurrott photo

“[T]he facial scanner in the iPhone X is based on the technology that Microsoft first used, disastrously, in its Xbox Kinect sensor. This probably explains why [Apple's Face ID] works so poorly: If Microsoft could never perfect this in a relatively huge device, how could Apple's component makers ever fit the technology into 'a space a few centimeters across and millimeters deep?”

Paul Thurrott (1966) American podcaster, author, and blogger

X-Cuses: iPhone X Facial Recognition Will Not Meet Expectations http://thurrott.com/mobile/ios/142329/x-cuses-iphone-x-facial-recognition-will-not-meet-expectations in Thurrott - The Home For Tech Enthusiasts: News, Reviews & Analysis (25 October 2017)

Harold Innis photo
László Moholy-Nagy photo

“The experience of space is not a privilege of the gifted few, but a biological function.”

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946) Hungarian artist

Moholy-Nagy by László Moholy-Nagy (1970) p. 238.

John F. Kennedy photo

“The deadly arms race, and the huge resources it absorbs, have too long overshadowed all else we must do. We must prevent that arms race from spreading to new nations, to new nuclear powers and to the reaches of outer space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

First State of the Union Address (30 January 1961)
1961, State of the Union

Émile Durkheim photo
James Jeans photo
Wernher von Braun photo

“There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program: Your tax dollar will go farther.”

Wernher von Braun (1912–1977) German, later an American, aerospace engineer and space architect

Attributed in Reader's Digest (1961), and The Yale Book of Quotations (2006) edited by Fred R. Shapiro, p. 101

Brian Greene photo
Jerry Coyne photo
Richard Long photo
Paul Mason (journalist) photo
Lorin Morgan-Richards photo

“I believe dreams connect us to our ancestors and it is through creativity that we can tap into this in the conscious state. Creativity is a sort of trance that we have as artists that erases time and space.”

Lorin Morgan-Richards (1975) American poet, cartoonist, and children's writer

Regarding his ancestry influencing his work; as quoted in "Americymru" http://americymru.blogspot.com/2010/08/interview-with-lorin-morgan-richards.html "An Interview With Lorin Morgan-Richards” (25 August 2010).

Vanna Bonta photo

“Imagine gazing at Earth or other space views.”

Vanna Bonta (1958–2014) Italian-American writer, poet, inventor, actress, voice artist (1958-2014)

Vanna Bonta Talks Sex in Space (Interview - Femail magazine)

Gerardus 't Hooft photo
Jeanette Winterson photo
Lama Ole Nydahl photo
Marino Marini photo
Alexander Pope photo

“Ye Gods! annihilate but space and time,
And make two lovers happy.”

Alexander Pope (1688–1744) eighteenth century English poet

Martinus Scriblerus on the Art of Sinking in Poetry, Chap. xi, reported in William Warburton, The Works of Alexander Pope, Esq (1751) p. 196.

Richard Dawkins photo
Charles Krauthammer photo
Alastair Reynolds photo
Dante Gabriel Rossetti photo

“What he feared most was the blind spot between us and the future, the space between identities where we could get lost forever.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"George Orwell, Artist" (1972), p. 46
The Good Word & Other Words (1978)

“An abstract painting will react to you if you react to it. You get from it what you bring to it. It will meet you half way but no further. It is alive if you are. It represents something and so do you. YOU, SIR, ARE A SPACE, TOO.”

Ad Reinhardt (1913–1967) American painter

Quote from the six page comic How to Look at Anvolved in some ideas. In painting – for me – no fooling-the-eye, no window-hole-in-the wall, no illusions, no representations, no associations, no distortions, no paint-caricaturing, no dream pictures of dripping, no delirium trimmings, no sadism or slashing, no therapy, no kicking-the-effigy, no clowning, no acrobatics, no heroics, no self-pity, no guilt.. ..no abstraction of everything, no nonsense, no involvements, no confusing painting with everything that is no painting.


Source: Contemporary American Painting, University rt, in Arts & Architecture, January 1947. note: 1940 - 1955,
en.wikiquote.org - Ad Reinhardt / Quotes of Ad Reinhardt / 1940 - 1955

Abraham Cowley photo

“Thus would I double my life's fading space;
For he that runs it well, runs twice his race.”

Abraham Cowley (1618–1667) British writer

Discourse xi, Of Myself, stanza xi; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "For he lives twice who can at once employ / The present well, and ev'n the past enjoy", Alexander Pope, Imitation of Martial.

Maddox photo
Benjamín Netanyahu photo
Patrick Pearse photo
Aldous Huxley photo

““What about spatial relationships?” the investigator inquired, as I was looking at the books. It was difficult to answer. True, the perspective looked rather odd, and the walls of the room no longer seemed to meet in right angles. But these were not the really important facts. The really important facts were that spatial relationships had ceased to matter very much and that my mind was perceiving the world in terms of other than spatial categories. At ordinary times the eye concerns itself with such problems as Where?—How far?—How situated in relation to what? In the mescalin experience the implied questions to which the eye responds are of another order. Place and distance cease to be of much interest. The mind does its Perceiving in terms of intensity of existence, profundity of significance, relationships within a pattern. I saw the books, but was not at all concerned with their positions in space. What I noticed, what impressed itself upon my mind was the fact that all of them glowed with living light and that in some the glory was more manifest than in others. In this context position and the three dimensions were beside the point. Not, of course, that the category of space had been abolished. When I got up and walked about, I could do so quite normally, without misjudging the whereabouts of objects. Space was still there; but it had lost its predominance. The mind was primarily concerned, not with measures and locations, but with being and meaning.”

describing his experiment with mescaline, pp. 19-20
Source: The Doors of Perception (1954)

Eugene Jarvis photo
Yehuda Ashlag photo
John Desmond Bernal photo
Léon Theremin photo

“I was interested in making a different kind of instrument. And I wanted, of course, to make an apparatus that would be controlled in space, exploiting electrical fields, and that would use little energy. Therefore I used electronic technology to create a musical instrument that would provide greater resources.”

Léon Theremin (1896–1993) Russian inventor

Source: An Interview with Leon Theremin http://www.oddmusic.com/theremin/theremin_interview_1.html / Olivia Mattis and Leon Theremin in Bourges, France 16 June 1989.

Jonah Goldberg photo
Edward Witten photo

“It is very possible that a proper understanding of string theory will make the space-time continuum melt away…. String theory is a miracle through and through.”

Edward Witten (1951) American theoretical physicist

as quoted by K.C. Cole, "A Theory of Everything" New York Times Magazine (1987) Oct.18

Joe Satriani photo

“My inspirations don't come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do.”

Joe Satriani (1956) American guitar player

As quoted in Guitar Magazine (March 1990).

Willem de Sitter photo
Shashi Tharoor photo
John Updike photo
James Jeans photo
Italo Calvino photo
John Desmond Bernal photo
Georg Simmel photo
Roger Penrose photo
Kurt Lewin photo

“The scope of time ahead which influences present behavior, and is therefore to be regarded as part of the present life-space, increases during development. This change in time perspective is one of the most fundamental facts of development. Adolescence seems to be a period of particularly deep change in respect to time perspective. The change can be partly described as a shift in scope. Instead of days, weeks, or months, now years ahead are considered in certain goals. Even more important is the way in which these future events influence present behavior. The ideas of a child of six or eight in regard to his occupation as an adult are not likely to be based on sufficient knowledge of the factors which might help or interfere with the realization of these ideas. They might be based on relatively narrow but definite expectations or might have a dream or playlike character. In other words, "ideal goals" and "real goals" for the distant future are not much distinguished, and this future has more the fluid character of the level of irreality. In adolescence a definite differentiation in regard to the time perspective is likely to occur. Within those parts of the life-space which represent the future, levels of reality and irreality are gradually being differentiated.”

Kurt Lewin (1890–1947) German-American psychologist

Kurt Lewin (1939) "Field theory and experiments in social psychology" in: American Journal of Sociology. Vol 44. p. 879.
1930s

Marcus Orelias photo
El Lissitsky photo
Joseph Addison photo

“Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 94 (18 June 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Jahangir photo