The view of the moon that we've been having recently is really spectacular. It fills about three-quarters of the hatch window, and of course we can see the entire circumference even though part of it is in complete shadow and part of it is in earthshine. It's a view worth the price of the trip.
- Neil Armstrong
Houston, Apollo 11… I've got the world in my window.
- Michael Collins
This beast is best felt. Shake, rattle, and roll. We are thrown left and right against our straps in spasmodic little jerks. It is steering like crazy, like a nervous lady driving a wide car down a narrow alley, and I just hope it knows where it's going, because for the first ten seconds we are perilously close to that umbilical tower.
- Michael Collins
The vehicle explodes, literally explodes, off the pad. The simulator shakes you a little bit, but the actual liftoff shakes your entire body and soul.
- Mike McCulley
Contact light.
- Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., man's first words after landing on the Moon.
Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.
- Neil Armstrong
Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You've got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again. Thanks a lot.
- Charlie Duke
That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind.
- Neil A. Armstrong
Roger, Tranquility. Be advised there are lots of smiling faces in this room and all over the world. Over.
- Charlie Duke
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
Neil and Buzz, I am talking to you by telephone from the Oval Office at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. As you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth.
- President Richard M. Nixon
The United States this week will commit its national pride, eight years of work and $24 billion of its fortune to showing the world it can still fulfill a dream. It will send three young men on a human adventure of mythological proportions with the whole of the civilized world invited to watch - for better or worse.
- Rudy Abramson
The moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.
- Arthur C. Clarke
Houston, that may have seemed like a very long final phase. The autotargeting was taking us right into a... crater, with a large number of big boulders and rocks ... and it required... flying manually over the rock field to find a reasonably good area.
- Neil Armstrong
Roger, we copy. It was beautiful from here, Tranquility. Over.
- Charlie Duke
We'll get to the details of what's around here, but it looks like a collection of just about every variety of shape - angularity, granularity, about every variety of rock. The colors - well, there doesn't appear to be too much of a general color at all; however, it looks as though some of the rocks and boulders [are] going to have some interesting colors to them. Over.
- Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr
It's not quite as exhilarating a feeling as orbiting the earth, but it's close. In addition, it has an exotic, bizarre quality due entirely to the nature of the surface below. The earth from orbit is a delight - offering visual variety and an emotional feeling of belonging "down there." Not so with this withered, sun-seared peach pit out of my window. There is no comfort to it; it is too stark and barren; its invitation is monotonous and meant for geologists only.
- Michael Collins
And don't forget one in the command module.... And thanks for putting me on relay, Houston. I was missing all the action.
- Michael Collins
We are gliding across the world in total silence, with absolute smoothness; a motion of stately grace which makes me feel godlike as I stand erect in my sideways chariot, cruising the night sky.
- Michael Collins
This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.
- President Richard M. Nixon
Nothing is more symptomatic of the enervation, of the decompression of the Western imagination, than our incapacity to respond to the landings on the Moon. Not a single great poem, picture, metaphor has come of this breathtaking act, of Prometheus' rescue of Icarus or of Phaeton in flight towards the stars.
- George Steiner
This has been far more than three men on a mission to the Moon; more still than the efforts of a government and industry team; more, even, than the efforts of one nation. We feel this stands as a symbol of the insatiable curiosity of all mankind to explore the unknown.
- Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr
Here Men From Planet Earth First Set Foot Upon The Moon July 1969 A.D. We Came In Peace For All Mankind.
- Plaque left on the Moon
No one, it has been said, will ever look at the Moon in the same way again. More significantly can one say that no one will ever look at the earth in the same way. Man had to free himself from earth to perceive both its diminutive place in a solar system and its inestimable value as a life -fostering planet. As earthmen, we may have taken another step into adulthood. We can see our planet earth with detachment, with tenderness, with some shame and pity, but at last also with love.
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh
It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.
- Charles Duke
What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.
- Norman Cousins
The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me - a small disk, 240,000 miles away… Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don't show from that distance.
- Frank Borman
If somebody'd said before the flight, "Are you going to get carried away looking at the earth from the moon?" I would have say, "No, no way." But yet when I first looked back at the earth, standing on the moon, I cried.
- Alan Shepard
The world itself looks cleaner and so much more beautiful. Maybe we can make it that way - the way God intended it to be - by giving everybody that new perspective from out in space.
- Roger B Chaffee
For forty-nine months between 1968 and 1972, two dozen Americans had the great good fortune to briefly visit the Moon. Half of us became the first emissaries from Earth to tread its dusty surface. We who did so were privileged to represent the hopes and dreams of all humanity. For mankind it was a giant leap for a species that evolved from the Stone Age to create sophisticated rockets and spacecraft that made a Moon landing possible. For one crowning moment, we were creatures of the cosmic ocean, an epoch that a thousand years hence may be seen as the signature of our century.
- Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.
The Lunar landing of the astronauts is more than a step in history; it is a step in evolution.
- 'New York Times' editorial
Earth bound history has ended. Universal history has begun.
- Earl Hubbard
For when I look at the moon I do not see a hostile, empty world. I see the radiant body where man has taken his first steps into a frontier that will never end.
- David R. Scott
Frequently on the lunar surface I said to myself, 'This is the Moon, that is the Earth. I'm really here, I'm really here!'
- Alan Bean, Apollo 12
From now on, we live in a world where man has walked on the moon. It wasn't a miracle, we just decided to go.
- Jim Lovell
What fiction could match - in drama or suspense - man's first walk on the Moon?
- Leonard Nimoy
I have sat by night beside a cold lake
And touched things smoother than moonlight on still water,
But the moon on this cloud sea is not human,
And here is no shore, no intimacy,
Only the start of space, the road to suns.
- Trans Canada by F.R. Scott
Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. ...The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.
- Dune by Frank Herbert
This is in a real sense the capstone of the initial missions to explore the planets. Pluto, its moons and this part of the solar system are such mysteries that New Horizons will rewrite all of the textbooks.
- Alan Stern
It'll be the fastest spacecraft ever to Jupiter… 13 months after launch. We pass the Moon in just nine hours.
- Alan Stern
We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share... I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth.
- President John F. Kennedy
We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained, and new rights to be won, and they must be won and used for the progress of all people. For space science, like nuclear science and technology, has no conscience of its own. Whether it will become a force for good or ill depends on man, and only if the United States occupies a position of preeminence can we help decide whether this new ocean will be a sea of peace or a new terrifying theater of war.
- President John F. Kennedy
Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said, 'Because it is there.' Well, space is there, and we're going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there. And, therefore, as we set sail we ask God's blessing on the most hazardous and dangerous and greatest adventure on which man has ever embarked.
- President John F. Kennedy
... the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward, and so will space.
- President John F. Kennedy
We choose to go to the moon. We choose to go to the moon in this decade... not because they are easy but because they are hard.
- President John F. Kennedy
But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?
- President John F. Kennedy
First I believe that this Nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon...
- President John F. Kennedy
We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.
- President John F. Kennedy
Now is the time...for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth.
- President John F. Kennedy
We believe that when men reach beyond this planet, they should leave their national differences behind them.
- President John F. Kennedy
When once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.
- Leonardo da Vinci
I think a future flight should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher… we might get a much better idea of what we saw.
- Michael Collins
We have taken to the Moon the wealth of this nation,
the vision of its political leaders,
the intelligence of its scientists,
the dedication of its engineers,
the careful craftsmanship of its workers,
and the enthusiastic support of its people.
We have brought back rocks, and I think it is a fair trade . . .
Man has always gone where he has been able to go. It's that simple.
He will continue pushing back his frontier,
no matter how far it may carry him from his homeland.
- Michael Collins
We can continue to try and clean up the gutters all over the world and spend all of our resources looking at just the dirty spots and trying to make them clean. Or we can lift our eyes up and look into the skies and move forward in an evolutionary way.
- Buzz Aldrin
Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program.
- David M. Brown
As much as we've enjoyed it up here, we're also starting to look forward to seeing all the people back on Earth that we miss and love so much.
- David M. Brown
I remember growing up thinking that astronauts and their job was the coolest thing you could possibly do... But I absolutely couldn't identify with the people who were astronauts. I thought they were movie stars.
- David M. Brown
I was interested in flying beginning at age 7, when a close family friend took me in his little airplane. And I remember looking at the wheel of the airplane as we rolled down the runway, because I wanted to remember the exact moment that I first went flying... the other thing growing up is that I was always interested in science.
- David M. Brown
The great thing about being an astronaut is you kind of get to do a little bit of everything. I mean, we're going to ride a rocket uphill.
- David M. Brown
The views of the Earth are really beautiful. If you've ever seen a space IMAX movie, that's really what it looks like. I wish I'd had more time just to sit and look out the window with a map, but our science program kept us very busy in the lab most of the time.
- David M. Brown
It will free man from the remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet.
- Wernher von Braun
There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.
- Wernher von Braun
We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.
- Wernher von Braun
Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.
- Wernher von Braun
A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.
- William Shatner
Space is so close: It took only eight minutes to get there and twenty to get back.
- Wubbo Ockels
If I’d been born in space, I would desire to visit the beautiful Earth more than to visit space. It’s a wonderful planet.
- David Brown
The colors are stunning. In a single view, I see - looking out at the edge of the earth: red at the horizon line, blending to orange and yellow, followed by a thin white line, then light blue, gradually turning to dark blue and various gradually darker shades of gray, then black and a million stars above. It’s breathtaking.
- Willie McCool
Feeling weightless… it's so many things together. A feeling of pride, of healthy solitude, of dignified freedom from everything that's dirty, sticky. You feel exquisitely comfortable . . . and you feel you have so much energy, such an urge to do things, such an ability to do things. And you work well, yes, you think well, without sweat, without difficulty as if the biblical curse in the sweat of thy face and in sorrow no longer exists, As if you've been born again.
- Wally Schirra
We were flying over America and suddenly I saw snow, the first snow we ever saw from orbit. I have never visited America, but I imagined that the arrival of autumn and winter is the same there as in other places, and the process of getting ready for them is the same. And then it struck me that we are all children of our Earth.
- Aleksandr Aleksandrov
As I looked down, I saw a large river meandering slowly along for miles, passing from one country to another without stopping. I also saw huge forests, extending along several borders. And I watched the extent of one ocean touch the shores of separate continents. Two words leaped to mind as I looked down on all this: commonality and interdependence. We are one world.
- John-David Bartoe
Once the hatch was opened, I turned the lock handle and bright rays of sunlight burst through it. I opened the hatch and dust from the station flew in like little sparklets, looking like tiny snowflakes on a frosty day. Space, like a giant vacuum cleaner, began to suck everything out. Flying out together with the dust were some little washers and nuts that dad got stuck somewhere; a pencil flew by.
My first impression when I opened the hatch was of a huge Earth and of the sense of unreality concerning everything that was going on. Space is very beautiful. There was the dark velvet of the sky, the blue halo of the Earth and fast-moving lakes, rivers, fields and clouds clusters. It was dead silence all around, nothing whatever to indicate the velocity of the flight… no wind whistling in your ears, no pressure on you. The panorama was very serene and majestic.
- Valentin Lebedev
The experience was more fulfilling than I could have ever imagined. I have a newfound sense of wonder seeing the Earth and stars from such an incredible perspective. Certainly, through my training I was prepared for the technical aspects, but I had no idea that I would be flooded with such amazement and joy after seeing my first sunrise and sunset from space.
- Greg Olsen
In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, "Look at that, you son of a bitch.
- Edgar Mitchell
I raised the visor on my helmet cover and looked out to try to identify constellations. As I looked out into space, I was overwhelmed by the darkness. I felt the flesh crawl on my back and the hair rise on my neck.
- William Pogue
The world looks marvelous from up here, so peaceful, so wonderful and so fragile. Everybody, all of us down there, not only in Israel, have to keep it clean and good.
- Israeli Air Force Col. Ilan Ramon
The Sun truly 'comes up like thunder,' and it sets just as fast. Each sunrise and sunset lasts only a few seconds. But in that time you see at least eight different bands of color come and go, from a brilliant red to the brightest and deepest blue. And you see sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets every day you're in space. No sunrise or sunset is ever the same.
- Joseph Allen
It’s beyond imagination until you actually get up and see it and experience it and feel it.
- Willie McCool
We entered into shadow. Contact with Moscow was gone. Japan floated by beneath us and I could clearly see its cities ablaze with lights. We left Japan behind to face the dark emptiness of the Pacific Ocean. No moon. Only stars, bright and far away. I gripped the handle like a man hanging onto a streetcar. Very slowly, agonizingly, half an hour passed, and with that, dawn on Earth. First, a slim greenish-blue line on the farthest horizon turning within a couple of minutes into a rainbow that hugged the Earth and in turn exploded into a golden sun. You're out of your mind, I told myself, hanging onto a ship in space, and to your life, and getting ready to admire a sunrise.
- Valeri Ryumin
Firefly meteorites blazed against a dark background, and sometimes the lightning was frighteningly brilliant. Like a boy, I gazed open-mouthed at the fireworks, and suddenly, before my eyes, something magical occurred. A greenish radiance poured from Earth directly up to the station, a radiance resembling gigantic phosphorescent organ pipes, whose ends were glowing crimson, and overlapped by waves of swirling green mist.
'Consider yourself very lucky, Vladimir,' I said to myself, 'to have watched the northern lights.'
- Vladimir Remek
I shuddered when I saw a crimson flame through the porthole instead of the usual starry sky at the night horizon of the planet. Vast pillars of light were bursting into the sky, melting into it, and flooding over with all the colors of the rainbow. An area of red luminescence merged smoothly into the black of the cosmos. The intense and dynamic changes in the colors and forms of the pillars and garlands made me think of visual music. Finally, we saw that we had entered directly into the aurora borealis.
- Aleksandr Ivanchenkov
The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man, has to make a man appreciate the creation of God and the love of God.
- James B. Irwin
On the way back [from the moon] we had an EVA [extra-vehicular activity, or spacewalk] I had a chance to look around while I was outside and Earth was off to the right, 180,000 miles away, a little thin sliver of blue and white like a new moon surrounded by this blackness of space. Back over my left shoulder was almost a full moon. I didn't feel like I was a participant. It was like sitting in the last row of the balcony, looking down at all of that play going on down there. I had that insignificant feeling of the immensity of this, God's creation.
- Charles Duke
Several days after looking at the Earth a childish thought occurred to me - that we the cosmonauts are being deceived. If we are the first ones in space, then who was it who made the globe correctly? Then this thought was replaced by pride in the human capacity to see with our mind.
- Igor Volk
You see layers as you look down. You see clouds towering up. You see their shadows on the sunlit plains, and you see a ship's wake in the Indian Ocean and brush fires in Africa and a lightning storm walking its way across Australia. You see the reds and the pinks of the Australian desert, and it's just like a stereoscopic view of all nature, except you're a hundred ninety miles up.
- Joseph Allen
Myriad small ponds and streams would reflect the full glare of the sun for one or two seconds, then fade away as a new set of water surfaces came into the reflecting position. The effect was as if the land were covered with sparkling jewels.
- Karl Henize
The Pacific. You don't comprehend it by looking at a globe, but when you're traveling at four miles a second and it still takes you twenty-five minutes to cross it, you know it’s big.
- Paul Weitz
Although the ocean's surface seems at first to be completely homogeneous, after half a month we began to differentiate various seas and even different parts of oceans by their characteristic shades. We were astonished to discover that, during an flight, you have to learn anew not only to look, but also to see. At first the finest nuances of color elude you, but gradually your vision sharpens and your color perception becomes richer, and the planet spreads out before you with all its indescribable beauty.
- Wadimir Lyakhov
We were able to see the plankton blooms resulting from the upwelling off the coast of Chile. The plankton itself extended along the coastline and had some long tenuous arms reaching out to sea. The arms or lines of plankton were pushed around in a random direction, fairly well-defined yet somewhat weak in color, in contrast with the dark blue ocean. The fishing ought to be good down there.
- Edward Gibson
As we were flying over the Mozambique Channel, which separates the island of Madagascar from the continent of Africa, we could clearly see the transverse sand bars at its bottom. It was just like a brook one waded in childhood.
- Lev Demin
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-Suad
We had various kinds of tape-recorded concerts and popular music. But by the end of the flight what we listened to most was Russian folk songs. We also had recordings of nature sounds: thunder, rain, the singing of birds. We switched them on most frequently of all, and we never grew tired of them. It was as if they returned us to Earth.
- Anatoli Berezovoy
A strange feeling of complete, almost solemn contentment suddenly overcame me when the descent module landed, rocked, and stilled. The weather was foul, but I smelled Earth, unspeakably sweet and intoxicating. And wind. Now utterly delightful; wind after long days in space.
- Andriyan Nicolayev
Suddenly, from behind the rim of the moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.
- Edgar Mitchell
My view of our planet was a glimpse of divinity.
- Edgar Mitchell
My first view - a panorama of brilliant deep blue ocean, shot with shades of green and gray and white - was of atolls and clouds. Close to the window I could see that this Pacific scene in motion was rimmed by the great curved limb of the Earth. It had a thin halo of blue held close, and beyond, black space. I held my breath, but something was missing - I felt strangely unfulfilled. Here was a tremendous visual spectacle, but viewed in silence. There was no grand musical accompaniment; no triumphant, inspired sonata or symphony. Each one of us must write the music of this sphere for ourselves.
- Charles Walker
For those who have seen the Earth from space, and for the hundreds and perhaps thousands more who will, the experience most certainly changes your perspective. The things that we share in our world are far more valuable than those which divide us.
- Donald Williams
What beauty. I saw clouds and their light shadows on the distant dear earth... The water looked like darkish, slightly gleaming spots... When I watched the horizon, I saw the abrupt, contrasting transition from the earth's light-colored surface to the absolutely black sky. I enjoyed the rich color spectrum of the earth. It is surrounded by a light blue aureole that gradually darkens, becoming turquoise, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.
- Yuri Gagarin
When I orbited the Earth in a spaceship, I saw for the first time how beautiful our planet is. Mankind, let us preserve and increase this beauty, and not destroy it!
- Yuri Gagarin
Looking outward to the blackness of space, sprinkled with the glory of a universe of lights, I saw majesty - but no welcome. Below was a welcoming planet. There, contained in the thin, moving, incredibly fragile shell of the biosphere is everything that is dear to you, all the human drama and comedy. That's where life is; that's were all the good stuff is.
- Loren Acton
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space.
- Aleksei Leonov
Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world…
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
- Alfred Lord Tennyson
Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.
- William Burroughs
I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.
- John Glenn
To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
We may discover resources on the moon or Mars that will boggle the imagination, that will test our limits to dream. And the fascination generated by further exploration will inspire our young people to study math, and science, and engineering and create a new generation of innovators and pioneers.
- President George W. Bush
Mars is there, waiting to be reached.
- Buzz Aldrin
We must somehow keep the dreams of space exploration alive, for in the long run they will prove to be of far more importance to the human race than the attainment of material benefits. Like Darwin, we have set sail upon an ocean: the cosmic sea of the Universe. There can be no turning back. To do so could well prove to be a guarantee of extinction. When a nation, or a race or a planet turns its back on the future, to concentrate on the present, it cannot see what lies ahead. It can neither plan nor prepare for the future, and thus discards the vital opportunity for determining its evolutionary heritage and perhaps its survival.
- James C. Fletcher
Mars tugs at the human imagination like no other planet. With a force mightier than gravity, it attracts the eye to its shimmering red presence in the clear night sky. It is like a glowing ember in a field of ethereal lights, projecting energy and promise. It inspires visions of an approachable world. The mind vaults to thoughts of what might have been (if Mars were a litter closer to the warming Sun) and of what could be (if humans were one day to plant colonies there). Mysterious Mars, alluring Mars, fourth planet from the Sun: so far away and yet, on a cosmic scale, so very near.
- John Noble Wilford
Mars is the next frontier, what the Wild West was, what America was 500 years ago. It’s time to strike out anew. Mars is where the action is for the next thousand years. The characteristic of human nature, and perhaps our simian branch of the family, is curiosity and exploration. When we stop doing that, we won’t be humans anymore. I’ve seen far more in my lifetime than I ever dreamed. Many of our problems on Earth can only be solved by space technology. The next step is in space. It’s inevitable.
- Arthur C. Clarke
The earth is simply too small and fragile a basket for the human race to keep all its eggs in.
- Arthur C. Clarke
If God wanted man to become a space faring species, He would have given man a moon.
- Krafft Ehricke
… to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before.
- Gene Roddenberry
I think that space flight is a condition of Nature that comes into effect when an intelligent species reaches the saturation point of its planetary habitat combined with a certain level of technological ability... I think it is a built-in gene-directed drive for the spreading of the species and its continuation.
- Donald A. Wollheim
Leave your home, O youth, and seek out alien shores. A wider range of life has been ordained for you.
- Petronius
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
of sun-split clouds and done a hundred things
you have not dreamed of wheeled and soared and swung
high in the sunlit silence. Hovering there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
my eager craft through footless halls of air.
Up, up the long, delirious, burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
where never lark, or even eagle flew
and, while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
the high untrespassed sanctity of space,
put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
- John Gillespie Magee Jr.
As soon as somebody demonstrates the art of flying, settlers from our species of man will not be lacking [on the moon and Jupiter]... Given ships or sails adapted to the breezes of heaven, there will be those who will not shrink from even that vast expanse.
- Johannes Kepler
The Earth is the cradle of humankind, but one cannot live in the cradle forever.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
Mankind will not remain on Earth forever, but in its quest for light and space will at first timidly penetrate beyond the confines of the atmosphere, and later will conquer for itself all the space near the Sun.
- Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky
God has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer space.
- Pope Pius XII
Life, forever dying to be born afresh, forever young and eager, will presently stand upon this Earth as upon a footstool, and stretch out its realm amidst the stars.
- H. G. Wells
Of all investments into the future, the conquest of space demands the greatest efforts and the longest-term commitment… but it also offers the greatest reward: none less than a universe.
- Daniel Christlein
Human interest in exploring the heavens goes back centuries. This is what human nature is all about.
- Dennis Tito
Quietly, like a night bird, floating, soaring, wingless.
We glide from shore to shore, curving and falling
but not quite touching;
Earth: a distant memory seen in an instant of repose,
crescent shaped, ethereal, beautiful,
I wonder which part is home, but I know it doesn't matter . . .
the bond is there in my mind and memory;
Earth: a small, bubbly balloon hanging delicately
in the nothingness of space.
- Alfred M. Worden
To fly in space is to see the reality of Earth, alone. The experience changed my life and my attitude toward life itself. I am one of the lucky ones.
- Roberta Bondar
Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds… to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.
- Ellison S. Onizuka
The choice is: the Universe…or nothing.
- H. G. Wells
I searched along the changing edge
Where, sky-pierced now the cloud had broken.
I saw no bird, no blade of wing,
No song was spoken.
I stood, my eyes turned upward still
And drank the air and breathed the light.
Then, like a hawk upon the wind,
I climbed the sky, I made the flight.
- Elizabeth J. Buchtenkirk
Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition.
- Isaac Asimov
If seeds in the black Earth can turn into such beautiful roses what might not the heart of man become in its long journey towards the stars?
- G. K. Chesterton
Your mysterious mountains I wish to see closer. May I land my kinky machine?
- Jimi Hendrix “Third Stone from the Sun”
Poised for flight,
Wings spread bright,
Spring from night into the Sun.
- Robert Hunter “Help on the Way”
Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars
- Les Brown
With every passing hour our solar system comes forty-three thousand miles closer to globular cluster 13 in the constellation Hercules, and still there are some misfits who continue to insist that there is no such thing as progress.
- Ransom K. Ferm
Mortal as I am, I know that I am born for a day. But when I follow at my pleasure the serried multitude of the stars in their circular course, my feet no longer touch the earth.
- Ptolemy
But does Man have any "right" to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics, you name it, is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know - later - whether or not Man has any "right" to expand through it.
- Robert A. Heinlein, "Starship Troopers"
When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won't be because its inhabitants visited their own moon. That first step, like a newborn's cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy.
- Michael Collins
We should have positive expectations of what is in the universe, not fears and dreads. We are made with the realization that we're not Earthbound, and that our acceptance of the universe offers us room to explore and extend outward. It's like being in a dark room and imagining all sorts of terrors. But when we turn on the light – technology - suddenly it's just a room where we can stretch out and explore. If the resources here on Earth are limited, they are not limited in the universe. We are not constrained by the limitations of our planet. As children have to leave the security of family and home life to insure growth into mature adults, so also must humankind leave the security and familiarity of Earth to reach maturity and obtain the highest attainment possible for the human race.
- Nichelle Nichols
For the environmentalists, The Space Option is the ultimate environmental solution. For the Cornucopians, it is the technological fix that they are relying on. For the hard core space community, the obvious by-product would be the eventual exploration and settlement of the solar system. For most of humanity however, the ultimate benefit is having a realistic hope in a future with possibilities.... If our species does not soon embrace this unique opportunity with sufficient commitment, it may miss its one and only chance to do so. Humanity could soon be overwhelmed by one or more of the many challenges it now faces. The window of opportunity is closing as fast as the population is increasing. Our future will be either a Space Age or a Stone Age.
- Arthur Woods and Marco Bernasconi
Men go into space to see whether it is the kind of place where other men, and their families and their children, can eventually follow them. A disturbingly high proportion of the intelligent young are discontented because they find the life before them intolerably confining. The moon offers a new frontier. It is as simple and splendid as that.
- Editorial on the moon landing, The Economist, 1969
It is not failure but success that is forcing man off this earth. It is not sickness but the triumph of health... Our capacity to survive has expanded beyond the capacity of Earth to support us. The pains we are feeling are growing pains. We can solve growth problems in direct proportion to our capacity to find new worlds... If man stays on Earth, his extinction is sure even if he lasts till the sun expands and destroys him... It is no longer reasonable to assume that the meaning of life lies on this earth alone. If Earth is all there is for man, we are reaching the foreseeable end of man.
- Earl Hubbard
The desire to reach for the sky runs deep in our human psyche.
- Cesar Pelli
This is the goal: To make available for life every place where life is possible. To make inhabitable all worlds as yet uninhabitable, and all life purposeful.
- Hermann Oberth
The point to remember is that a giant leap into space can be a giant leap toward peace down below.
- Willy Ley
Sooner or later for good or ill, a united mankind, equipped with science and power, will probably turn its attention to the other planets, not only for economic exploitation, but also as possible homes for man... The goal for the solar system would seem to be that it should become an interplanetary community of very diverse worlds... each contributing to the common experience its characteristic view of the universe. Through the pooling of this wealth of experience, through this "commonwealth of worlds," new levels of mental and spiritual development should become possible, levels at present quite inconceivable to man.
- Olaf Stapledon
A time will come when science will transform [our bodies] by means which we cannot conjecture... And then, the earth being small, mankind will migrate into space, and will cross the airless Saharas which separate planet from planet, and sun from sun. The earth will become a Holy Land which will be visited by pilgrims from all quarters of the universe.
- Winwood Reade
Every civilization [in the universe] must go through this [a nuclear crisis]. Those that don't make it destroy themselves. Those that do make it end up cavorting all over the universe.
- Ted Taylor
One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.
- Andre Gide
If you go far enough out you can see the Universe itself, all the billion light years summed up time only as a flash, just as lonely, as distant as a star on a June night if you go far enough out. And still, my friend, if you go far enough out you are only at the beginning of yourself.
- Rolf Jacobsen
I hear beyond the range of sound,
I see beyond the range of sight,
New earths and skies and seas around,
And in my day the sun doth pale his light.
- Henry David Thoreau
Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra - these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known… this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.
- Vladimir Nabokov
The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.
- Eugene Cernan
You almost wish you could turn off the COMM and just appreciate the deafening quiet.
- Russell Schweickart
We want to explore. We're curious people. Look back over history, people have put their lives at stake to go out and explore... We believe in what we're doing. Now it's time to go.
- Eileen Collins
To get your name well enough known that you can run for a public office, some people do it by being great lawyers or philanthropists or business people or work their way up the political ladder. I happened to become known from a different route.
- John Glenn Jr.
I think it's going to be great if people can buy a ticket to fly up and see black sky and the stars. I'd like to do it myself - but probably after it has flown a serious number of times first!
- Paul Allen
Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world; knowing they're going to light the bottom, and doesn't get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation.
- John Young
We fooled ourselves into thinking this thing wouldn't crash. When I was in astronaut training I asked, 'what is the likelihood of another accident?' The answer I got was: one in 10,000, with an asterisk. The asterisk meant, 'we don't know.'
- Bryan O'Connor
Equipped with his five senses, man explores the universe around him and calls the adventure Science.
- Edwin Hubble
For all these years you were merely
A smear of light through our telescopes
On the clearest, coldest night; a hint
Of a glint, just a few pixels wide
On even your most perfectly-framed portraits.
But now, now we see you!
Swimming out of the dark - a great
Stone shark, your star-tanned skin pitted
And pocked, scarred after aeons of drifting
Silently through the endless ocean of space.
Here on Earth our faces lit up as we saw
You clearly for the first time; eyes wide
With wonder we traced the strangely familiar
Grooves raked across your sides,
Wondering if Rosetta had doubled back to Mars
And raced past Phobos by mistake -
Then you were gone, falling back into the black,
Not to be seen by human eyes again for a thousand
Blue Moons or more. But we know you now,
We know you; you’ll never be just a speck of light again.
- Stuart Atkinsonpace