Top 300 Quotes & Sayings by Buzz Aldrin

Mars is far more attractive as an outpost colony for earthlings than the moon is.

The way I see it, what is going to come out of the moon activities is a respect for U.S. leadership.

The biggest benefit of Apollo was the inspiration it gave to a growing generation to get into science and aerospace.

As someone who flew two space capsules and twice landed in the ocean, I can attest from personal experience how much logistics work is needed to get you home.

I think humans will reach Mars, and I would like to see it happen in my lifetime.

Mars is there, waiting to be reached.

Is the destiny of the human species to sit back and play with our mouse and computer and imagine, fantasize?

Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.

Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans.

Nobody cares about the bronze or silver medals.

For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.

Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.

Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.

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.

Having walked on the Moon, I know something about what we need to explore, really explore, in space.

I've led a life of such structured discipline and always had a goal in mind of knowing what I was doing, from West Point to the Air Force combat, MIT, looking for new things to study and get involved in. And then I got into the space program, and how disciplined can you get?

As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.

I really hate to be put in the position of trying to justify something, a decision that was made. I'm a military guy: when a decision is made, I go along with it, whatever the manufactured controversy and criticism.

I realize that my life is not the common ordinary person.

Going back to the moon is not visionary in restoring space leadership for America. Like its Apollo predecessor, it will prove to be a dead end littered with broken spacecraft, broken dreams and broken policies.

It's time to open the space frontier to citizen explorers.

I'm urging NASA to foster the development of what I call 'runway landers.' No, that's not the name of a high stakes gambler from Vegas. It's a type of spacecraft that flies to orbit like the retiring Shuttles but then glides to a landing like an airplane on a runway. Just like the Shuttles do.

Exploring and colonizing Mars can bring us new scientific understanding of climate change, of how planet-wide processes can make a warm and wet world into a barren landscape. By exploring and understanding Mars, we may gain key insights into the past and future of our own world.

I think the American Dream used to be achieving one's goals in your field of choice - and from that, all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow.

When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.

There may be aliens in our Milky Way galaxy, and there are billions of other galaxies. The probability is almost certain that there is life somewhere in space.

Space is not just going up and coming back down again. Space is getting into orbit and being there, living there, establishing a presence, a permanence.

By refocusing our space program on Mars for America's future, we can restore the sense of wonder and adventure in space exploration that we knew in the summer of 1969. We won the moon race; now it's time for us to live and work on Mars, first on its moons and then on its surface.

Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.

Every couple of years, we could dispatch people from Earth to Mars.

I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.

Maybe it was the challenge of flight, the opportunity to fly, the competition of summer camp and the inspiration and discipline of West Point. I think all of those things helped me to develop a dedication and inspired me to get ahead.

Like actors and writers who are on and off again in terms of employment, I had a very unstructured life.

Before deciding what to do about national space policy, Obama set up an outside review panel of space experts, headed up by my friend Norm Augustine, former head of Lockheed Martin and a former government official.

There's a historical milestone in the fact that our Apollo 11 landing on the moon took place a mere 66 years after the Wright Brothers' first flight.

The pilgrims on the Mayflower landed at Plymouth Rock. To my knowledge, they didn't wait around for a return trip to Europe. You settle some place with a purpose. If you don't want to do that, stay home. You avoid an awful lot of risks by not venturing outward.

We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there.

One of the major problems with long-term deep space human flight is the requirement for radiation shielding.

A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.

Because of his military service, Dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.

Let's not spend resources that we don't need to be sending astronauts back to the moon. Let's not spend expensive resources on bringing people who have reached Mars back again. Prepare them to become a growing colony.

Human rights problems will always exist for years to come, but maybe they'll lessen somewhat.

Some things just can't be described. And stepping onto the moon was one of them.

Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.

If we can conquer space, we can conquer childhood hunger.

I still say, 'Shoot for the moon; you might get there.'

I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family.

The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.

The beauty of Hawaii probably surpasses other places. I like the Big Island and the two mountains, Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea, where you can look out at the stars.

Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar inspected, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked, and even laser blasted.

My own American Dream was to serve my country as best I could and make a difference in America - and in the world.

The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars... and then on the surface.

In Mars, we've been given a wonderful set of moons... where we can send continuous numbers of people.

It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the Moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

Mars is much closer to the characteristics of Earth. It has a fall, winter, summer and spring. North Pole, South Pole, mountains and lots of ice. No one is going to live on Venus; no one is going to live on Jupiter.

Timing has always been a key element in my life. I have been blessed to have been in the right place at the right time.

Globalisation means many other countries are asserting themselves and trying to take over leadership. Please don't ask Americans to let others assume the leadership of human exploration. We can do wonderful science on the Moon, and wonderful commercial things. Then we can pack up and move on to Mars.

Armstrong described the lunar surface as 'beautiful.' I thought to myself, 'It's not really beautiful. It's magnificent that we're here, but what a desolate place we are visiting.'

We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.

Space architectures capable of supporting a permanent human presence on Mars are extraordinarily complex, with many different interdependent systems.