21 quotes
A Dobsonian telescope is just a pile of stuff.
The importance of a telescope is not how big it is, it's not how well made it is, it's how many people less fortunate than you got to look through it.
A park ranger once questioned the appropriateness of the telescopes, saying, "The sky is not a part of the park," to which Dobson replied, "No, but the park is part of the sky."
If the momentum approaches zero, our uncertainty in the momentum approaches zero.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
The spacetime separation between here-now and there-then is objective.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
But how could the ether be sufficiently rigid to transmit the vibrations at the speed of light and yet let the planets pass through it?
Photons? (1984)
For many years Newton's view swept the field. But why don't corpuscles collide?
Photons? (1984)
The Big Bang people wanted to get everything out of nothing. They want us to believe that nothing made everything out of nothing.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
If the amateurs don't get their telescopes out for the public, nobody will! The professionals make telescopes for the professionals. We sidewalk astronomers make telescopes for the rest of you.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
You can't persuade a kid that nothing made everything out of nothing. ...It's impossible to get everything out of nothing.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
Now back to the border... where the radiation as seen by us approaches zero.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
So as I see it, the stuff recycles from the border.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
95%... of this stuff is going to be blown away.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
I know. You'll say, "I'm going to go along with the damned clock. That's entirely arbitrary, and the rest of the universe is not going along with your damned clock anyway.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
Energy is... the nature of... underlying existence showing through in space and time... it... remains constant.
Entropy (1995)
Now if the universe weren't made out of frustration, it couldn't go on like this. Cheer up. There's no way out of it.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
I'm not responsible for any of those equations. ...I'm just your tour guide.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
This is Einstein's 1905 geometry.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
So now it's impossibility cubed.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)
We have only an explanation of how things fall, not why they fall; and how they coast, not why they coast; and that they are made of electricity and not why they're made of electricity. Those old physicists had the why answer on this.
John Dobson at the 2005 NOVAC Star Gaze (2005)