Vera Rubin, fully Vera Cooper Rubin

Science progresses best when observations force us to alter our preconceptions.

Scientists too seldom stress the enormity of our ignorance. Virtually everything we know about galaxies we have learned during the last 100 years? But what are the questions for future astronomers? What questions will astronomers be asking of the universe 100 years from now? A thousand years from now?

Three of my children married Jewish people. One did not and that marriage didn't last more than half a dozen years or so. The others are still very close.

We all need permission to do science, but, for reasons that are deeply ingrained in history, this permission is more often given to men than to women.

We became astronomers thinking we were studying the universe, and now we learn that we are just studying the 5 or 10 percent that is luminous.

As we peer into the universe we are peering into our past, but our ?eyes? are weak and we have not yet seen to great distances. No one promised that we should live in the era that would unravel the mysteries of the cosmos. The edge of the universe is far beyond our grasp. Like Columbus, perhaps like the Vikings, we have peered into a new world and have seen that it is more mysterious and more complex than we had imagined. Still more mysteries of the universe remain hidden. Their discovery awaits the adventurous scientists of the future. I like it this way.

We know very little about the universe, I personally don?t believe it?s uniform and the same everywhere. That?s like saying the earth is flat.

Does Sex Matter? Of course it does. But does it matter enough to Matter? That's a different question.

Worldwide, half of all brains are in women.

Don?t let anyone keep you down for silly reasons such as who you are, and don?t worry about prizes and fame. The real prize is finding out something new out there.

Don?t shoot for the stars. We already know what?s there. Shoot for the space in between because that?s where the real mystery lies.

I decided I needed to give up something, so I gave up teaching.

I guess to me religion is a kind of moral code.

In a spiral galaxy, the ratio of dark-to-light matter is about a factor of ten. That's probably a good number for the ratio of our ignorance-to-knowledge. We're out of kindergarten, but only in about third grade.

It's certainly true that most of my close friends are Jewish.

No observational problem will not be solved by more data.

Religion is not the most important thing.

Science is competitive, aggressive, demanding. It is also imaginative, inspiring, uplifting.

No observational problem will not be solved by more data.