That's one small step for [a] man; one giant leap for mankind.

— Neil A. Armstrong, Commander Apollo 11, first words spoken by a man walking on another heavenly body, received at 9:56 pm local time in Houston (Mission Elapsed Time 109:24:13), as Armstrong stepped off the LM 'Eagle' and onto the Moon in the Mare Tranquilitatis (Sea of Tranquility), 20 July 1969.

Neil Armstrong

Listen to the original transmission from the Moon
Or watch the original TV broadcast (MPEG)

Armstrong didn't realize the 'a' was not heard until after he got back to Earth. In the book 'First on the Moon' (the "exclusive and official account . . . as seen by the men who experienced it") Neil wrote his famous words with the 'a,' noting that Mission Control missed the 'a' in the first phrase. He writes "tape recorders are fallible." Listening to the tape, people could not hear the 'a'. Maybe he did not say it. Armstong was an amazing test pilot, then awake for 24 hours, making history in the ultimate uncertain environment. He was not an actor used to reciting lines. When presented with a plaque by the builders of the Lunar Module he pointed out their mistake in failing to include the 'a', at which point he was told that the word was not in the tapes. He insisted—at that time—that he had said it. Thirty years later he said:

The 'a' was intended. I thought I said it. I can't hear it when I listen on the radio reception here on earth, so I'll be happy if you just put it in parenthesis. (16 July, 1999.)

Of course, maybe he did say it. In his official biography, First Man, Armstrong states,

It doesn’t sound like there was time for the word to be there. On the other hand, I didn’t intentionally make an inane statement . . . certainly the ‘a’ was intended, because that’s the only way the statement makes any sense.

The most recent news (The Times of London, 02 October 2006) is that by using high-tech sound analysis techniques, an Australian computer expert has rediscovered the missing 'a'. "Peter Shann Ford ran the NASA recording through sound-editing software and clearly picked up an acoustic wave from the word 'a', finding that Mr Armstrong spoke it at a rate of 35 milliseconds—ten times too fast for it to be audible. Mr Ford’s findings have been presented to NASA officials in Washington." Neil Armstrong issued a statement saying: “I find the technology interesting and useful. I also find his conclusion persuasive.”

Asked at the Apollo 11 postflight crew press conference when he had begun to think about what he would say and how long he pondered the words, Neil replied:

Yes, I did think about it. It was not extemporaneous neither was it planned. It evolved during the conduct of the flight and I decided what the words would be while we were on the lunar surface just prior to leaving the LM. (Houston, 12 August 1969)

Asked years later if NASA suggested a line for him to say, Neil answered:

The late Julian Scheer, who really led the NASA relations with the outside world in many ways, was absolutely adamant that Headquarters never put words in the mouths of their people, not just astronauts, but anybody, that they let people speak for themselves. They made it known sort of what the party line was and what the NASA position was, but beyond that, they never, to my knowledge, controlled the … public statements of others. Certainly they insisted, in the case of the flight crews, that they not be told what to say, that their statements be their own elocution of what they saw and what they wanted to say. As far as I know, that prohibition was never violated.

He added:

I thought about it after [the lunar] landing, and because we had a lot of other things to do, it was not something that I really concentrated on but just something that was kind of passing around subliminally or in the background. But it, you know, was a pretty simple statement, talking about stepping off something. Why, it wasn't a very complex thing. It was what it was. . . . I didn't think of it as being as important as others. I didn't want to be dumb, but it was contrived in a way, and I was guilty of that. (NASA Oral History Project, Houston, 19 September 2001)

Interviewed at age 75 about the line, he said:

I thought that when I step off it's just going to be a little step, you'll step from there, down to there. But then I thought about all those 400,000 people that had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's gonna be a big something for all those folks and indeed a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project. So it was a kind of simple correlation of thoughts. (60 minutes TV show, 6 November 2005)

It is a great line, among the best aerospace lines ever, but did not impress everybody.  Another explorer with a famous first—Edmund Hillary, first to climb Mount Everest—said it would have been, "better if he had said something natural like, 'Jesus, here we are!'" The July 1969 edition of Esquire magazine even had as its cover story famous writers discussing what the first words should be.

Armstrong's next words, right after the small step, show the expert descriptive test pilot at work:

The surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers, like powdered charcoal, to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine, sandy particles. There seems to be no difficult in moving around, as we suspected.

Neil's partner on the Moon, Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., was next out the hatch. Buzz said, "Be sure not to lock it on my way out." On the surface, Neil says "Isn't that something? Magnificent sight out here." Buzz replys:

Magnificent desolation.

Listen to Buzz's original transmission (MP3)

When the eagle landed on the moon, I was speechless—overwhelmed, like most of the world. Couldn't say a word. I think all I said was, "Wow! Jeez!" Not exactly immortal. Well, I was nothing if not human.

—Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, interview in 'Esquire' magazine, April 2006.

Whoopee! Man, that may have been a small one for Neil, but it's a long one for me.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

— Charles "Pete" Conrad Jr., Commander Apollo 12 and the shortest Apollo astronaut, upon becoming the 3rd man to walk on the Moon, 19 November 1969. Regards the line he said later in a PBS interview:

 "Well, nobody remembers the second and that was why I said what I said. It was based on a bet I had with somebody who felt that Neil's words had been propaganda and not written by him. And I tried to assure this person that that wasn't the case. And so it was in August of '69 before the fight when I made this bet: that I would say something that they would know that the United States government wasn't Big Brother telling us what to say. So I said, "It may have been small for Neil but it was a big one for a little fella like me" and it came out close to that. And I was right, nobody remembers what the second person said anyhow. And the only bad thing was the person that I made the bet with didn't pay off".

Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.

— Alan Shepard, Commander Apollo 14, upon becoming the 5th (and oldest) man to walk on the Moon, 5 February 1971.

As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there's a fundamental truth to our nature, Man must explore . . . and this is exploration at its greatest.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

— Dave Scott, Commander Apollo 15, upon becoming the 7th man to walk on the Moon, 31 July 1971.

There you are, mysterious and unknown Descartes highland plains. Apollo 16 is gonna change your image. . . .I'm sure glad they got ol' Brer Rabbit here, back in the briar patch where he belongs.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

— John Young, Commander Apollo 16, upon becoming the 9th man to walk on the Moon, 21 April 1972. NASA says that the rabbit references come from the Joel Chandler Harris story "How Mr. Rabbit was too sharp for Mr. Fox". In the story, Brer Rabbit has become entangled with the Tar Baby and is caught by Brer Fox. Brer Fox thinks he might roast Brer Rabbit, who says, "I don't care what you do with me, Brer Fox, just so you don't fling me in that briar patch." As it turns out, there is no firewood handy, so Brer Fox thinks about hanging Brer Rabbit, who says that would be much better than being thrown in the briar patch. And so on. On his fourth spaceflight, NASA has finally thrown John Young in the briar patch.

As I step off at the surface at Taurus-Littrow, I'd like to dedicate the first step of Apollo 17 to all those who made it possible.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

— Gene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17, upon becoming the 11th man to walk on the Moon, 11 December 1972.

We're number one on the runway.

— Buzz Aldrin, 21 hours and 36 minutes after landing on the moon, his reply to Houston's "Our guidance recommendation is PGNCS and you are cleared for takeoff." The ascent stage rocket was then lit and Neil and Buzz left the moon.

Bob, this is Gene, and I'm on the surface; and, as I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come - but we believe not too long into the future - I'd like to just [say] what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And, as we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

— Gene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17. Last man to walk on the Moon, 14 December 1972.

OK, let's get this mother out of here.

— Eugene Cernan, Commander Apollo 17. Reportedly (astronaut Walter Cunningham in his book, 'The All-American Boys') the last words spoken on the Moon. However the transcripts show Cernan saying right before takeoff, "Okay. Now, let's get off. Forget the camera" and the last words being Dr. Harrison Hagen "Jack" Schmitt saying, "3, 2, 1 . . . ignition" The LM lifted off the Moon at 22:54:37 GMT on 14 December 1972.

Listen to the original transmission (MP3)

Watch Apollo 17 leave the Moon (MPEG)

A little levity is appropriate in a dangerous trade.

— Walter M. Schirra Jr.

Unfortunately the suit is so stiff, I can't do that with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand trap shot here.

— Alan Shepard, Apollo 14, golfing on the Moon, 6 February 1971.

To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more?

— Yuri Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин), prior to flight, 1961.

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 turquiose, dark blue, violet, and finally coal black.

— Yuri Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин).

I am eagle, I am eagle!

— Gherman Titov (Герман Степанович Титов), Russia’s second astronaut.

It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

— Wernher von Braun

God has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer space.

— Pope Pius XII

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.

— Yuri Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин), 14 April 1961. Quoted in 'To Rise from Earth' (1996) by Wayne Lee; Variant: There are also websites which quote him as saying "I looked and looked and looked but I didn't see God."

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 (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин), regards his first spaceflight, 1961. (Облетев Землю в корабле-спутнике, я увидел, как прекрасна наша планета. Люди, будем хранить и приумножать эту красоту, а не разрушать ее!)

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, 'Ulysses,' 1842.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

— Inscription on Columbus' caravels

The Moon is the first milestone on the road to the stars.

— Arthur C. Clarke

Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another.

— Plato, 'The Republic,' 342 B.C.

Why should we try for space travel? It cannot be a substance of any kind that can be expected to pay. It can only be something intangible, not involving haulage, which is at the same time more valuable. There is something like that: Knowledge.

— Willy Ley, 1945.

The beep beep sound of Sputnik

— 4 October 1957.

Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?

— Alan B. Shepard Jr., to Mission Control regards another delay during his four hour sit atop the 10-story, 33-ton Redstone rocket while last-minute problems were being fixed. Cape Canaveral Air Station, just prior to the United States' first manned space mission, 5 May 1961.

Contact light.

— Edwin E. "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., man's first words after landing on the Moon.

Shutdown.

— Neil Armstrong, next words.

Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.

— Neil Armstrong, transmitting from the Moon, 3:18 p.m. Houston time 20 July 1969. This call and the phrase 'Tranquility Base' were unknown in advance to NASA. Buzz Aldrin later said in a PBS interview that:

As soon as we touched down, I knew we'd done it, but I knew that there were certain discrete times after the nominal touchdown, if something was wrong, you don't want to abort right away, you want to wait until this discrete time, because there are more favorable rendezvous conditions. After about two minutes, then it's too late really, because if you were to lift off after two minutes after the normal landing, Mike Collins is going around and around and he's too far ahead for you to catch up to him in a reasonable time, and he's going to have to do some other maneuvers so that you can catch up with him. So those first couple of minutes are very crucial to look around and see if everything is okay and hope that the Earth is measuring everything of the status of all your pressure systems, and your tanks, and your electrical systems, because if you do have to abort, you should do it right away. And I felt that that was a fairly critical time, so it surprised me that during that time, Neil chose to make the call to Houston Tranquility Base that the Eagle has landed. It surprised me a little bit, because we never trained to do that, because we didn't want to tell them back in the simulators in the training what we were going to say after we landed, and I expected he would wait until we'd been there [and] that we could monitor those things. But it's something that is a surprise, but then you understand — well, that's the way you should do it; you should call right away, things like that.

Anyway, the reply was:

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, CapCom, Mission Control.
Listen to the whole final approach

Fantastic!

— Michael Collins, orbiting in the command module.

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, CapCom

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.

Rog, Tranquility. Be advised there are lots of smiling faces in this room and all over the world. Over.

— Charlie Duke, CapCom

There are two of them up here.

— Neil Armstrong

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

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, 9 November 1969

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, Commander Apollo 14, in an interview October 1988.

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, lecture at the Salzburg Festival, 5 August 1994.

Man looks aloft, and with erected eyes
Beholds his hereditary skies.

— Ovid

Per Ardua, Ad Astra.

— "Through struggles, To the stars." Motto of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force. This phrase was used by Virgil in the 'Aeneid', and also seen in H. Rider Haggard's novel 'The People of the Mist'. First selected and approved as the motto for the Royal Flying Corps on 15 March 1913.

Per Aspera, Ad Astra.

 — "Through hardships, To the stars." Motto of NASA and the South African Air Force. From Seneca the Younger.  Ad Astra is the title of the National Space Society magazine.

I think Isaac Newton is doing most of the driving now.

— Bills Anders, Apollo 8 Commander, when told that a ground controller's son had asked who was driving the capsule on the return from the Moon to the Earth, 26 December 1968.

If we are to win the battle that is now going on around the world between freedom and tyranny, the dramatic achievements in space which occurred in recent weeks should have made clear to all of us, as did Sputnik in 1957, the impact of this adventure on the minds of men everywhere... Now it is time to take longer strides-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. ...we have never made the national decisions or marshaled the national resources required for such leadership. We have never specified long-range goals on an urgent time schedule... Space is open to us now; and our eagerness to share its meaning is not governed by the efforts of others. 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. No single space project...will be more exciting, or more impressive to mankind, or more important...and none will be so difficult or expensive to accomplish...

— President John F. Kennedy, Special Joint Session of Congress, 25 May 1961. At the time the US manned space program had about 15 minutes of actual time logged. Hear the whole speech, real audio format.

We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.

— 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, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September,1962.

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, Rice University, Houston, Texas, 12 September,1962.

If I could get one message to you it would be this: the future of this country and the welfare of the free world depends upon our success in space. There is no room in this country for any but a fully cooperative, urgently motivated all-out effort toward space leadership. No one person, no one company, no one government agency, has a monopoly on the competence, the missions, or the requirements for the space program.

— President Lyndon B. Johnson

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, 'Los Angeles Times,' July 13 1969.

It is the policy of the United States that activities in space should be devoted to peaceful purposes for the benefit of all mankind.

— P. L. 85-568 U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958.

Is the Moon made out of green cheese?
No, it's American cheese.

— Bill Anders, Apollo 8, after splashdown, while the first humans to travel to the Moon waited to be picked up out of the ocean, someone called from the ship or the helicopter asking is the Moon made of green cheese, 27 December 1968.

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.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun, in 'Time' magazine, 17 February 1958

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, 'Civilian Defense,' 1985.

I am a friend, comrades, a friend!

— Yuri A. Gagarin, first words on the ground after first spaceflight, to a woman and a girl nearby, 12 April 1961.

The woman replied: Can it be that you have come from outer space?
Yuri: As a matter of fact, I have!

Godspeed, John Glenn.

— Scott Carpenter, spoken as Friendship 7 lifted off, but not over the ground-to-air circuit and so not heard by John Glenn, 20 February 1962. From 'God Spede you,' or God prosper you, which is a 15th century Middle English expression of good wishes to a person starting a journey.

Zero G and I feel fine.

— John Glenn, in orbit, 20 February 1962.

I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.

— John Glenn

That was a real fireball.

— John Glenn, re-entry, 20 February 1962

You could see the flames and the outer skin of the spacecraft glowing; and burning, baseball-size chunks flying off behind us. It was an eerie feeling, like being a gnat inside a blowtorch flame.

— Bill Anders, Apollo 8 re-entry, quoted in 'Lunar Reflections' Omni magazine, July 1989.

I am a stranger. I come in peace. Take me to your leader and there will be a massive reward for you in eternity.

— Note carried by John Glenn on his historic flight, translated into several languages, for use if he splashed down in the remote South Pacific seas.

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, regards his Gemini 10 spacewalk, 'Carrying The Fire'.

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

We all feel that there's a lot more to this thing than just being Number One, though we all want that. The Number One man will be the tool of our close-knit team. We're just getting started here with space programs that will continue as long as man can pick himself up and go. And we're all going to get a chance to make some contribution. There will be a lot of firsts: the first man on a ballistic firing, the first man into orbit, the first man to orbit the Moon, the first man to land on the Moon. The public enthusiasm in this thing so far has surprised me. If we don't keep moving, maybe the Russians are going to win a few of these blue ribbons.

— Gordon Cooper, 'Life' magazine, 1959.

I'm proud to be an American, I'll tell you. What a program and what a place and what an experience.

— Charlie Duke, Apollo 16 Lunar Module Pilot, saluting the U.S. flag on the surface of the Moon, 21 April 1972.

And as we know now, and as I pointed out many times, the great plume of fire at the bottom of the Space Shuttle is actually dollar bills burning, and the most efficient method of destroying American dollar bills as has ever been devised by man.

— Representative Dana Rohrabacher, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics, during fiscal year 1998 NASA authorization hearings, 4 March 1997.

The Shuttle is to space flight what Lindberg was to commercial aviation.

— Arthur C. Clarke

We have your satellite if you want it back send 20 billion in Martian money. No funny business or you will never see it again.

— Reportedly on a wall in a hall at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab, California, after losing contact with the Mars Polar Lander.

We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

— Gene Roddenberry

It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice, really; it's an imperative.

— Michael Collins

To go places and do things that have never been done before - that's what living is all about.

— Michael Collins

Suddenly I saw a meteor go by underneath me. A moment later I found myself think, that can’t be a meteor. Meteors burn up in the atmosphere above us; this was below us. Then, of course, the realization hit me.

— Jeffrey Hoffman.

But since time slows down aboard the starship, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the crew could reach the Pleiades star-cluster (M45), which is 400 light-years away, in as little as eleven years, by the clocks aboard the starship. After 25 shipboard years, such a ship could even reach the Great Andromeda Galaxy - although over 2 million years would have passed on the earth.
Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his pseudonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass.

— Michio Kaku, 'Visions - How science will revolutionize the 21st century,' 1997.

Teach me your mood,
O patient stars.
Who climb each night,
the ancient sky.
leaving on space no shade, no scars,
no trace of age, no fear to die.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, 'The Poet.'

Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and awe—the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.

— Immanuel Kant, 'Critique of Pure Reason,' Conclusion

Be glad of life, because it gives you the chance to love and to work and to play and to look up at the stars.

— Henry Van Dyke

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

— Joseph Joubert

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

— Walt Whitman

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

— Captain James T. Kirk, start of every episode of the original TV series 'Star Trek.'

I had the ambition to not only go farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go.

— Captain Cook

The Soviet Union has become the seacoast of the universe.

— Sergei Korolev

A-OK full go.

— Commander Alan Shepard Jr., on blast-off of rocket carrying him aloft as America's first man in space, 5 May 1961. Defined as an engineering term for 'double OK' or perfect, it became a U.S. idiom for 'everything is going smoothly' and was later attributed by the Associated Press (New York Times, 31 July, 1963) to Lieutenant-Colonel John Powers, public spokesman for astronauts.

What good is the Moon? You can't buy it or sell it.

— Ivan F. Boesky, Wall Street broker convicted of insider trading.

This is the greatest week in the history of the world since the Creation.

— President Richard M. Nixon, to Apollo XI crew aboard USS Hornet, 24 July 1969.

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, in a broadcast from Apollo XI.

It's a strange, eerie sensation to fly a lunar landing trajectory - not difficult, but somewhat complex and unforgiving.

— Neil Armstrong

Now I want to partially close the hatch, making sure not to lock it on my way out.

— Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., leaving the lunar lander.

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.
Watch the original TV broadcast of the dedication on the Moon (MPEG)

It's different, but it's very pretty out here. I suppose they are going to make a big deal of all this.

— Neil Armstrong, transmitting from the Moon.

It's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly does not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.

— Frank Borman, regards the lunar surface.

The human space program has existed in the collective unconscious of humanity since the dawn of awareness.

— Frank White, 'The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution,' 1987.

The Moon is a white strange world, great, white, soft-seeming globe in the night sky, and what she actually communicates to me across space I shall never fully know. But the Moon that pulls the tides, and the Moon that controls the menstrual periods of women, and the Moon that touches the lunatics, she is not the mere dead lump of the astronomist.... When we describe the Moon as dead, we are describing the deadness in ourselves. When we find space so hideously void, we are describing our own unbearable emptiness.

— D.H. Lawrence, 'Phoenix: The Posthumous Papers of D.H. Lawrence, pt. 4,' 1930.

The Lunar landing of the astronauts is more than a step in history; it is a step in evolution.

— 'New York Times' editorial, 20 July 1969.

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.
Watch the whole phone call (MPEG)

Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace. These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice.

These two men are laying down their lives in mankind's most noble goal: the search for truth and understanding. They will be mourned by their families and friends; they will be mourned by their nation; they will be mourned by the people of the world; they will be mourned by a Mother Earth that dared send two of her sons into the unknown.

In their exploration, they stirred the people of the world to feel
as one; in their sacrifice, they bind more tightly the brotherhood of
man. In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.

Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man's search
will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever mankind.

— 'In the event of Moon disaster,' speech drafted by William Safire for President Richard M. Nixon to give to the nation should Neil and Buzz not be able to rejoin the command module and be faced with death on, or around, the Moon, the memo to H. R. Haldeman was dated 18 July 1969. This text remained secret for thirty years.

We have seen a wonder. There has never been one quite like it. What first steps in human history would one have chosen to witness, if one could travel in time? The Vikings coming ashore wherever they did come ashore — Newfoundland? — in North America? Or the first little boat from Columbus's ship scraping the land under her keel? Yet all of that, or any other bit of geographical discovery, we should be seeing with hindsight. On the spot, it must have seemed much more down-to-earth. People getting out of boats must have looked (and felt) very much like people getting out of boats anywhere at anytime.

No, we have had the best of it. We have seen something unique. It is right that is should have looked like something we have never seen before. In science films, perhaps — but this was real. The figure, moving so laboriously, as though it was learning, minute by minute, to walk, was a man of our own kind. Inside that gear there was a foot, a human foot. Watch. It has come, probing its way down — near to something solid. One expects to hear (there is no air, one could hear nothing) a sound. At last, it has come down. Onto a surface. Onto the surface of the Moon.

Well, we have seen a wonder. We ought to count our blessings.

— Lord C. P. Snow, 'Look' magazine, 1969.

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, 'The Economist' magazine, 1969.

It is a monster, that rocket. It is not a dead animal; it has a life of its own.

— Guenter Wendt

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, 'Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years.'

We're all aware that for over 200 years and certainly over the last two months, freedom rings loud and clear across this country -- but right here and right now, it's time to let freedom roar!

— Dom Gorie, commander of Space Shuttle Endeavour, just before engine ignition for mission STS-108, 5 Dec 2001.

The only thing I've experienced that could compare to the launch in terms of raw power was the Loma Prieta earthquake.

— Loren Acton, 'Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years.'

The rockets light! The shuttle leaps off the launch pad in a cloud of steam and a trail of fire.

— Sally Ride, 'To Space and Back,' 1986.

I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.

— William Shatner, the actor who played Captain James T. Kirk, regards offer by Richard Branson to fly on Virgin Galactic, reported in Daily Mail newspaper, 6 September 2006.

Do you realize what we accomplished today? Today the spaceship was born.

— Dr. Walter Robert Dornberger, spoken to Wernher von Braun, after the first successful flight of  the A-4 rocket, to the edge of space, 3 October 1942.

All right. Let's get on with it!

— T. Keith Glennan, first NASA administrator, regarding the space program, 7 October 1958.

It all looked so easy when you did it on paper—where valves never froze, gyros never drifted, and rocket motors did not blow up in your face.

— Milton W. Rosen, rocket engineer, 1956.

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

What the space program needs is more English majors.

— Michael Collins

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, 'Carrying the Fire.'

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, Father of Russian Astronautics, 1896.

The greatest gain from space travel consists in the extension of our knowledge. In a hundred years this newly won knowledge will pay huge and unexpected dividends.

— Wernher von Braun.

During the period of the Saturn-Apollo missions we were pilgrims in space, ranging from home in search of knowledge. Now we will become shepherds tending our technological flocks, but like the shepherds of old, we will keep our eyes fixed on the heavens.

— President Jimmy Carter, 1978.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

— Stephen Hawking

There are celestial sights more dazzling, spectacles that inspire more awe, but to the thoughtful observer who is privileged to see them well, there is nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive as these canals of Mars. Fine lines and little gossamer filaments only, cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk, but threads to draw one's mind after them across the millions of miles of intervening void.

— Percival Lowell, 1908.

Until they come to see us from their planet, I wait patiently. I hear them saying: Don't call us, we'll call you.

— Marlene Dietrich

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

— E. B. White

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, Commander Apollo 8.

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.

— Arthur Koestler

The real friends of the space voyager are the stars.

— James Lovell

Space is the stature of God.

— Joseph Joubert, French essayist, moralist. Pens_es, no. 183,  1842.

Now approaching lunar sunrise.  And for all the people back on Earth, the crew of Apollo eight has a message that we would like to send to you. "In the Beginning god created the Heaven and the Earth. And the Earth was without form and void. And darkness was upon the face of the Deep. . . . And God saw that it was Good. . . . " And from the crew of Apollo 8, we close with good night, good luck, and a Merry Christmas. And God bless all of you, all of you on the good Earth.

— flight crew of Apollo 8, Christmas Eve, 1968.
Listen to the whole transmission

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

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, 'Earth Shine,' 1969.

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light—our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

— Ulf Merbold.

It’s beyond imagination until you actually get up and see it and experience it and feel it.

— Willie McCool

It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.

— Charles Duke

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

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

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

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

To see the earth as it truly is, small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves a riders on the earth together, brothers on that bright loveliness in the eternal cold—brothers who know now they are truly brothers.

— Archibald MacLeish

My mental boundaries expanded when I viewed the Earth against a black and uninviting vacuum, yet my country's rich traditions had conditioned me to look beyond man-made boundaries and prejudices. One does not have to undertake a space flight to come by this feeling.

— Rakesh Sharma

Now I know why I'm here. Not for a closer look at the moon, but to look back at our home, the Earth.

— Alfred Worden

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

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

Earth bound history has ended. Universal history has begun.

— Earl Hubbard

This blowing dust became increasingly thicker. It was very much like landing in a fast-moving ground fog.

— Neil Armstrong

I don't believe any pair of people had been more removed physically from the rest of the world than we were.

— Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr.

In order for us to use the very best judgment possible in spending the taxpayer's money intelligently, we just have to do a certain amount of this research and development work ourselves. We just have to keep our own hands dirty to command the professional respect of the contractor personnel engaged with actual design, shop and testing work.

— Wernher von Braun, speech to the Sixteenth National Conference on the Management of Research, 18 September 1962

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'Profiles of the Future' (1962; rev. 1973).

Program Alarm, it's a 1202.

— Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., during final descent to the Moon.

Roger, we're go on that alarm

— Charlie Duke, Houston CapCom. The computer overflowed several more times during the first lunar descent. The historic decision to continue was communicated by young engineer Steve Bales with the classic line, "Go flight." His judgment and decisiveness was awarded with a Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony.

Armstrong sitting in the commander's seat, spacesuit on, helmet on, plugged into electrical and environmental umbilicals, is a . . . machine himself.

— Norman Mailer

The flight was extremely normal . . . for the first 36 seconds then after that got very interesting.

— Pete Conrad, Apollo 12 commander, regards the launch during which two electrical discharges almost ended the mission.

Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here.

— John "Jack" Swigert, Jr., Apollo 13 command module pilot, 9:07 PM Central Time, 13 April 1970.

Say again please.

— Jack Lousma, Houston CapCom.

Err Houston, we've had a problem. [pause] We've had a main B bus undervolt.

— James A "Jim" Lovell Jr., Apollo 13 commander.
Listen to the actual radio transmission (MP3)

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.

— Lady Violet Bonham Carter

It means nothing to me. I have no opinion about it, and I don't care.

— Pablo Picasso, reacting to the first Moon-landing, quoted in 'The New York Times,'  21 July 1969.

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.

The world is being Americanized and technologized to its limits, and that makes it dull for some people. Reaching the Moon restores the frontier and gives us the lands beyond.

— Isaac Asimov, regards Apollo.

We believe that when men reach beyond this planet, they should leave their national differences behind them.

— John F. Kennedy, news conference, 21 February 1962.

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

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

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

— Laurel Clark

It's one of the great delights and memories for me . . . I felt like I was seeing, woven together, the power and scale of the entire world.

— Kathy Sullivan, first U.S. woman to walk in space.

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.

— Christa McAuliffe, December 6, 1985.

We are all . . . children of this universe. Not just Earth, or Mars, or this system, but the whole grand fireworks. And if we are interested in Mars at all, it is only because we wonder over our past and worry terribly about our possible future.

— Ray Bradbury, 'Mars and the Mind of Man,' 1973.

Those who study the stars have God for a teacher.

— Tycho Brahe

One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions

— Wernher von Braun

A human being is the best computer available to place in a spacecraft. . . It is also the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

— Werner von Braun

Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

— Werner von Braun

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away, if your car could go straight upwards.

— Sir Fred Hoyle, 'Observer' newspaper, London, 9 September, 1979.

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, cofounder of Microsoft regards commercial space rides, 'Discover' magazine April 2007.

Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles or so to work and back each day.

— Bill Vaughan, quoted in 'Reader's Digest,' January 1956.

Ten years ago the Moon was an inspiration to poets and an opportunity for lovers. Ten years from now it will be just another airport.

— Emmanuel G. Mesthene

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

— Freeman Dyson

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.

— Henry Miller

A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.

— Ben Bova

Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.

— Robert A. Heinlein

The fourth landing of the Columbia is the historical equivalent of the driving of the golden spike which completed the first transcontinental railroad. It marks our entrance into a new era.

— President Ronald Reagan, regards the final test flight of the Space Shuttle, STS-4, 4 July 1982.

If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. Sailors on a becalmed sea, we sense the stirring of a breeze.

— Carl Sagan, 'To The Sky,' 1994.

I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

— Burt Rutan, 'Time' 5 March 2007.

It is humanities destiny to explore the universe. When we start thinking and working on that cosmic level, we will transcend our parochial differences and tribal natures and become global creatures, solar system creatures. Then we will figure out where we fit in.

— Story Musgrove

Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

— Robert A. Heinlein

It's just a bunch of junk up there.

— Harry Monroe, 1986.

Houston, Apollo 11 . . . I've got the world in my window.

— Michael Collins

I really didn't appreciate the first planet [earth] until I saw the second one. . . . I cannot recall [the Moon's] tortured surface without thinking of the infinite variety the delightful planet earth offers.

— Michael Collins

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, Commander Apollo 15, 'National Geographic', Volume 144, No 3, September 1973.

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, describing his spacewalk of 30 July 1982.

The scenery was very beautiful. But I did not see the Great Wall.

— Yang Liwei, China's first astronaut (or 'yuhangyuan'), 15 October 2003.

Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the Moon that it is to penetrate one's own being.

— Carl Gustav Jung, quoted in Miguel Serrano's 'The Farewell.'

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

— Christa McAuliffe, teacher, from her winning essay in NASA’s nationwide search for the first teacher to travel in space, released after her death with six others aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

Our nation is indeed fortunate that we can still draw on an immense reservoir of courage, character, and fortitude, that we are still blessed with heroes like those of the space shuttle Challenger. Man will continue his conquest of space. To reach out for new goals and ever-greater achievements, that is the way we shall commemorate our seven Challenger heroes.

— President Ronald Reagan

To use a Southern euphemism, our space program has been snake-bit.

— Al Gore, (then) US Senator, regards the unsuccessful launch of an unmanned rocket shortly after the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger, 'Nightline' TV show, 5 May 1986.

We used to joke about canned men, putting people in a can and seeing how far you can send them and bring them back. That's not the purpose of this program... Space is a laboratory, and we go into it to work and learn the new.

— John Glenn Jr.

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 didn't care if I was first, 50th, or 500th in space. I just wanted to go.

— Dennis Tito, first space tourist, during Mir training over a year prior to launch, quoted in USA Today 20 June 2000.

We are very happy to accompany you to space. We like your mathematical mind. And we more like your romantic soul.

— Yuri Baturin, cosmonaut flight engineer, regards Dennis Tito, 'Newsweek,' April 2001.

You are not a baby. I am not a babysitter. I am commander. You are 'first cosmonaut tourist,' an 'engineer in education.' It is very important for mankind.

— Talgat Musabayev, cosmonaut commander, regards Dennis Tito, Newsweek,' April 2001.

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, space tourist, a technology entrepreneur who paid $20 million to spend 10 days at the International Space Station, on landing, 10 October 2005.

I would spend hours and hours gazing at the stars and wondering, what's out there? Sometimes I wondered if . . .  maybe there was another girl like me on another planet some place gazing at the stars and thinking about the same things.

— Anousheh Ansari, preparing to be the first female space tourist and first Iranian in space. A few weeks before launch, 1 September 2006.

The next time I go into space, I'll be able to take my family with me.

— Kathryn Thornton, former NASA astronaut regards space tourism. 2006.

You're in charge but don't touch the controls.

— Shannon Lucid, recounting what the two Russian cosmonauts told her every time they left the Mir space station for a spacewalk, 1996.

The only thing it would be nice to have more of would be M & M's.

— Shannon Lucid, after 6 months on Space Station Mir, 1996.

It's 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 Shepherd

There's the whole myth about rocket science. It's really not that hard. It's not brain surgery.

— John Powell, founder JP Aerospace, 'Wired' magazine July 2006.

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

— Vice President of the U.S. Dan Quayle

It might be helpful to realize, that very probably the parents of the first native born Martians are alive today.

— Harrison "Jack" Schmitt

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, who played Captain Kirk in the original 'Star Trek.'

Why our space program? Why, indeed, did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

— Gene Roddenberry

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars....A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'First on the Moon,' 1970.

Human interest in exploring the heavens goes back centuries. This is what human nature is all about.

— Dennis Tito, 'Newsweek,' 6 October 2003.

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, STS-114 commander, a few days before the re-launch of the Space Shuttle program, reported on Space.com, 11 July 2005.

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

Many say exploration is part of our destiny, but it's actually our duty to future generations and their quest to ensure the survival of the human species.

— Buzz Aldrin, on the 37th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Landing, July 2006

Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolution, the first waves of modern invention and the first wave of nuclear power. And this generation does not intend to founder in the backwash of the coming age of space. We mean to be part of it - we mean to lead it.

— President John F. Kennedy

Once during the mission I was asked by ground control what I could see. "What do I see?" I replied. "Half a world to the left, half a world to the right, I can see it all. The Earth is so small."

— Vitali Sevastyanov

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

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

The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic.

— Aleksei Leonov

"You're out of your mind!" I told myself, hanging onto a ship in space, and getting ready to admire a sunrise.

— Valeri Ryumin

Suddenly I saw a meteor go by underneath me.

— Jeff Hoffman

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

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

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, Apollo 15.

We went to the Moon as technicians; we returned as humanitarians.

— Edgar Mitchell.

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

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, 'Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years.'

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, 29 January 2003.

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

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, born in Kealakekua, Kona, was Hawaii's first astronaut and the first Asian American in space.

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

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

The thing I'll remember most about the flight is that it was fun. In fact, I'm sure it was the most fun that I'll ever have in my life.

— Sally K. Ride, first woman to orbit Earth aboard the Space Shuttle, 1983.

I'm hungry. I want to eat something delicious, have a beer and a cigarette. I've come back to Earth full of desires. The air tastes good.

— Toyohiro Akiyama, first Japanese citizen in space, a TV journalist, first words after an unhappy eight days onboard Soyuz TM-11. 10 December 1990.

For the first time in my life I saw the horizon as a curved line. It was accentuated by a thin seam of dark blue light - our atmosphere. Obviously this was not the ocean of air I had been told it was so many times in my life. I was terrified by its fragile appearance.

—  Ulf Merbold

A Chinese tale tells of some men sent to harm a young girl who, upon seeing her beauty, become her protectors rather than her violators. That's how I felt seeing the Earth for the first time. I could not help but love and cherish her.

—  Taylor Wang

As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful 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.

— James B. Irwin, Apollo 15.

The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.

— Anaxagoras, 459 BC.

I have a strong feeling about interesting people in space exploration. . . . And the only way it's going to happen is to have some kid fantasize about getting his ray gun, jumping into his spaceship, and flying into outer space.

— George Lucas, creator of Star Wars

First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.

— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1926.

From now on we'll live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle, we just decided to go.

— Jim Lovell

Development of the space station is as inevitable as the rising of the sun; man has already poked his nose into space and he is not likely to pull it back . . . . There can be no thought of finishing, for aiming at the stars—both literally and figuratively—is the work of generations, and no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.

— Werner von Braun, 1952.

It's too bad, but the way American people are, now that they have all this capability, instead of taking advantage of it, they'll probably just piss it all away.

— President Lyndon B. Johnson, regards the end of the Apollo program.

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

In my own view, the important achievement of Apollo was a demonstration that humanity is not forever chained to this planet, and our visions go rather further than that, and our opportunities are unlimited.

— Neil Armstrong, July 1999.

We came all this way to explore the moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the earth.

— William Anders, Apollo 8.

The regret on our side is, they used to say years ago, we are reading about you in science class. Now they say, we are reading about you in history class.

— Neil Armstrong, July 1999.

The urge to explore has propelled evolution since the first water creatures reconnoitered the land. Like all living systems, cultures cannot remain static; they evolve or decline. They explore or expire. . . . Beyond all rationales, space flight is a spiritual quest in the broadest sense, one promising a revitalization of humanity and a rebirth of hope no less profound than the great opening out of mind and spirit at the dawn of our modern age.

— Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin Jr., 'From the Moon to the Millennium,' 1999.

People want a space program that goes somewhere and does something.

— NASA administrator Michael Griffin, reported on CNN.com, 11 July 2005.

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.

I know enough about the moon to know how unpleasant and inhospitable it is. . . . I know enough about Mars to know that you can't live there, you can't settle it. Mars and the moon are two ugly islands. So then, you say, what's the point of going to them? The point is to be able to say I've been there, I've set foot on them, and I can go further to look for beautiful islands.

— Wally Schirra

For me the singe overarching goal of human space flight is the human settlement of the solar system . . . no greater purpose is possible.

— Mike Griffin, NASA administrator, Congressional testimony 2004.

The strongest affection and utmost zeal should, I think, promote the studies concerned with the most beautiful objects. This is the discipline that deals with the universe's divine revolutions, the stars' motions, sizes, distances, risings and settings . . . for what is more beautiful than heaven?

— Nicolaus Copernicus, 'On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres,' 1543.