Galaxies are composed of millions of stars and come in a variety of shapes and sizes. Our understanding of the universe depends on our understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies. This talk will show images of classic nearby galaxies (including our own Milky Way) taken with optical telescopes, and compare them to the images at much longer wavelengths to show the large differences. Moving farther away into the distant universe where our eyes cannot help us anymore, we can show how new telescopes are teaching us about the universe when it was very young.