Quotes by Astronauts

People are afraid of the future of the unknown. If a man faces up to it and takes the dare of the future he can have some control over his destiny. That's an exciting idea to me better than waiting with everybody else to see what's going to happen.
John H. Glenn
Fear is not an unknown emotion to us.
Neil Armstrong
There is no quality of human nature so nearly royal as the ability to yield gracefully.
Charles Conrad
That's one small step for a man one giant leap for mankind.
Neil Armstrong
You don't raise heroes, you raise sons. And if you treat them like sons, they'll turn out to be heroes, even if it's just in your own eyes.
Walter M. Schirra
The Moon did not consider that amongst the stars, there is no end. There is no fading away. There is no death in a place filled with forever, even though we all trick ourselves into thinking that this life we live now is the only life we will ever live.
Paul The Astronaut
At this point I thought 'We made it,' by which I meant 'We survived.' I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true.
Ron Garan
Ideally, the ISS program will just be one more incremental step on an expanding, incredible journal of exploration and understanding, taking us higher and farther.
Ron Garan
I lay on my back, surprised at how calm and focused I felt, strapped to four and a half million pounds of explosives.
Ron Garan
Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn’t come out.
Edgar D. Mitchell
If you have never been saved,you need to stop right where you are and admit to God that you are a sinner in need of salvation. Then ask Him for the gift of eternal life that was made available to you when Christ took your punishment and died for your sins on the
Jerry L. Ross
Knowledge is fundamental to all human achievements and progress. It is both the key and the quest that advances mankind. The search for knowledge is what brought men to the moon; but it took knowledge already acquired to make it possible to get there.How we use the knowledge we gain determines our progress on earth, in space or on the moon. Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it
Neil Armstrong
I heard sad choirs in my mind. There was nothing left of Rachel in the world. He cherished what he'd shown me, and now it was gone. Eureka.
Scott Kelly
To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is to me impossible.
John Glenn
Whether you are an astronomer or a life scientist, geophysicist, or a pilot, you've got to be there because you believe you are good in your field, and you can contribute, not because you are going to get a lot of fame or whatever when you get back.
Alan Shepard
We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.
William A. Anders Apollo 8 Lunar Module Pilot
I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.
Alan Shepard
And in that moment, I was hit with the realization that this delicate layer of atmosphere is all that protects every living thing on Earth from perishing in the harshness of space.
Ron Garan
The first day or so we all pointed to our countries. The third or fourth day we were pointing to our continents. By the fifth day, we were aware of only one Earth.
Sultan bin Salman Al-Saud
Everyone I have spoken with about working with the Russians in space exploration believes that the United States has learned a great deal from Russia and that Russia has learned a great deal from the United States – and that the entire international space partnership is much better because of it.
Ron Garan
We essentially had to build a docking mechanism between the two capsules. We didn't have to share a lot of data, and we did that at the height of the Cold War, which was pretty symbolic." –Bill Gerstenmaier
Ron Garan
Time Dreams. They are memories of the soul. They encompass all Time. They exist in the space of a dream.
Tom Stafford
We were like the Mount Everest climbers stepping over frozen corpses from prior climbing disasters in our quest for the summit. Like those climbers, we were motivated by a fear far greater than death—the fear of not reaching the top.
Mike Mullane
Nothing boosts confidence quite like simulating a disaster, engaging with it fully, both physically and intellectually, and realising you have the ability to work the problem.
Chris Hadfield
You can't solve problems until you understand the other side." –Jeffrey Manber
Ron Garan
After mutual respect and understanding are achieved, it is possible to establish real, sincere relationships, which is the foundation of a solid long-term collaboration.
Ron Garan
Homes should mean something to us humans. They are a basic instinct. A home, with a life that centers only on food and sleep, is not really a home, it's a house. Beauty and graciousness, joy of living, being used in every part, these are the things that make a house a home. (chapter header quote from Popular Home Decorations, 1940)
Ellen Baker
From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck, drag him a quarter of a million miles out, and say, 'Look at that, you son of a bitch.
Ed Mitchell
When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth,all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why the hell can't we live together like decent people?
Frank Borman
If I'd defined success very narrowly, limiting it to peak, high-visibility experiences, I would have felt very unsuccessful and unhappy during those years. Life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so.
Chris Hadfield
It was one of those perfect nights, listening to the waves crash, feeling the warm summer breeze, watching the sun set over the ocean as the moon rose up in the sky. I looked out over the cliffs and I thought about the explorers who had sailed from places like this, what they'd accomplished, mapping the unknown world, charting our place in the universe. How many times had they failed and fallen down only to get back up and try again? How many times had they sailed out on an impossible voyage and made a successful return home? I sat there with Carola looking out over the endless horizon. It was strange, but I felt like everything was going to be okay. The end of my story was not yet written, and I still had the chance to make it extraordinary.
Mike Massimino
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.
Neil Armstrong
A partner's different perspective is valuable, but the very fact that it is different means that it will require work, humility, time, and resources to incorporate that perspective. At times, this will require checking one's pride at the door.
Ron Garan
Value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you.
Chris Hadfield
Curiosity is the essence of our existence.
Gene Cernan
It is a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.
Alan Shepard
This was exactly what I experienced in space: immense gratitude for the opportunity to see Earth from this vantage, and for the gift of the planet we've been given.
Ron Garan
Humanity is destined to explore, settle, and expand outward into the universe.
Buzz Aldrin
Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe.
Ron Garan
It takes all of this technology to come up here and understand the simplicity of things. From here, it’s really difficult to understand borders, wars, and hate.
Thomas Pesquet (French astronaut)
Goodnight, moon. Goodnight, stars. Goodnight planets, comets and... Mars. Yes, even you, Mars. And not only for the sake of the rhyme.
Paul The Astronaut
Blinking, twinkling, burning brightAre all the stars that light the night.Dippers, Ursa's and Orion too,But don't forget the star in you.
Paul The Astronaut
Collaboration begins with mutual understanding and respect.
Astronaut Ron Garan
Each book holds an experience and an adven
Neil Armstrong
If we adopt the same collaborative mindset and practices that got to the moon and back, and that built the International Space Station, we can alleviate poverty—and do much more.
Ron Garan
Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand.
Neil Armstrong
My optimism and confidence come not from feeling I'm luckier than other mortals, and they sure don't come from visualizing victory. They're the result of a lifetime spent visualizing defeat and figuring out how to prevent it. Like most astronauts, I'm pretty sure that I can deal with what life throws at me because I've thought about what to do if things go wrong, as well as right. That's the power of negative thinking.
Chris Hadfield
I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on.
Alan Shepard
I wasn't lonely. Loneliness, I think, has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world. If anything, because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more aware of and connected to the seven billion other people who call it home.
Chris Hadfield
People are more likely to remember the great social interaction they had with a colleague than the great meeting they both attended.
Ron Garan
If you work hard and get help from good friends, together you can overcome almost any challenge, no matter how great.
Mike Massimino
We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act.
Ron Garan
Open collaboration encourages greater accountability, which in turn fosters trust.
Ron Garan
It's never either-or, never enjoyment versus advancement, so long as you conceive of advancement in terms of learning rather than climbing to the next rung of the professional ladder. You are getting ahead if you learn, even if you wind up staying on the same rung.
Chris Hadfield
I do not know your woes, Humans, but I do know that they are abundant. Believe in each other, and stand together, and you will conquer them all.
Paul The Astronaut
I think he was trying to tell us that life is not about achieving one great thing, because once that thing is over, life keeps going. What motivates you then? The important thing is having a passion, something you love doing, and the greatest joy in the world is that you get to wake up every day and do it.
Mike Massimino
The important thing in life is having a passion, something you really love doing, and you take joy in the fact that you get to wake up every day and do it.
Mike Massimino
Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline
Buzz Aldrin
The desire to live life to its fullest, to acquire more knowledge, to abandon the economic treadmill, are all typical reactions to these experiences in altered states of consciousness. The previous fear of death is typically quelled. If the individual generally remains thereafter in the existential state of awareness, the deep internal feeling of eternity is quite profound and unshakable.
Edgar D. Mitchell
It's puzzling to me that so many self-help gurus urge people to visualize victory, and stop there. Some even insist that if you wish for good things long enough and hard enough, you'll get them - and, conversely, that if you focus on the negative, you actually invite bad things to happen. Why make yourself miserable worrying? Why waste time getting ready for disasters that may never happen? Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive. Likewise, coming up with a plan of action isn't a waste of time if it gives you peace of mind. While it's true that you may wind up getting ready for something that never happens, if the stages are at all high, it's worth it.
Chris Hadfield