Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by John Glenn
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American astronaut John Glenn.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
One of the first things I learned in the Marine Corps is that any military mission has to be defined as precisely as you can possibly define it, and then you size the force and equipment force to accomplish that mission without fail.
I wouldn't oppose a women's astronaut training program; I just see no requirement for it.
It has been my observation that the happiest of people, the vibrant doers of the world, are almost always those who are using - who are putting into play, calling upon, depending upon-the greatest number of their God-given talents and capabilities.
The space station is the most unique laboratory we've ever built. The reason we have it is to do research on materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals - the possibilities are nearly endless.
Just to continue a space program because it's a space program? No, I don't think we have an obligation for that.
I didn't see Saddam Hussein as being quite the danger that some other people did.
You can always say that it was scarce dollars when Lewis and Clark wanted to go to the West Coast and explore the West. And people complained about it, I understand, from a reading of the history books.
Quite often, while I'm getting up in the morning, I think my warranty is running out on these body parts because it's not working quite the way it used to.
I have no political affiliations and have always and do now consider myself an independent.
I've seen John Wayne's 'True Grit' about 10 times.
I do not have to watch late-night television, watch a movie, to find out what combat is like.
The time will come when we permit more people in space.
We're not up there in space just to joyride around. We're up there to do things that are of value to everybody right here on Earth.
The best space movie in my view is 'Apollo 13.' That's just the way it happened.
I was hooked on aviation, made model airplanes, and never thought I would be able to fly myself. It cost too much. But then World War II came along and changed all that.
This is a day we have managed to avoid for a quarter of a century.
If people like Edison had waited to make every - or Ben Franklin or some of those people had waited to solve every problem on Earth before they did their research or before they were curious about doing something new, we'd never have made a lot of the progress we have.
I spent 23 years in the military. I think I'm in a good position to make those judgments on what is necessary in the military and what is not necessary, without buying a lot of things that would not really add to our security.
You can't relive your life.
I say let's not gamble with American jobs and America's future.
Any administration foolish enough to call ketchup a vegetable cannot be expected to cut the mustard.
I've never let people push me around in politics.
The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.
The Discovery was the most intricate, complex machine man has ever built. It's a testament to our time.
I'm not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: 'live-acy.' I'm more interested in living.
There is still no cure for the common birthday.
In the old days, the Soviets were using space as a selling point for communism.
Probably, had World War II not come along and intervened, I would have tried to be a doctor. My son's a doctor, and I still take some medical journals to this day.
To me, we have never really exploited our ability in low-Earth orbit.
We had 83 different space research projects on my last space flight in '98, and they covered the whole gamut.
The conquest of space is not merely a technological project of interest to a handful of select scientists and specialists, valuable though that research and information may be.
If you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, you can see the burn patterns on Friendship 7.
I supported the efforts in Honduras to stop the flow of arms from Nicaragua across to El Salvador.
You should run your life not by the calendar but how you feel, and what you're interests are and ambitions.
Old folks have dreams and ambitions too, like everybody else. Don't sit on a couch someplace.
In orbit, you're keyed up and aware of everything going on, every little noise, anything that may have special meaning because of where you are.
Fear connotes something that interferes with what you're doing.
As far as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.
As far as entertainment, 'The Right Stuff' is a good movie. As far as a documentary of the early space days, which they purported it to be, it is not at all.
I liked flying, when I got into it, loved it. And I found I was very good at it. I'm not modest about the fact that I was a good pilot.
I think even in bad times it's good to keep some money going into research. And that's the purpose of the whole space program. It's not just exploration and going to see how far we can go out into space and keep people alive and bring them back, although exploration certainly has its place.
An end of something means the beginning of something else, and I don't think that something else is going to be the death of the manned space program.
When the new becomes commonplace, people become accustomed to it. That's a tribute to our sense of adventure.
I pray every day and think everybody should.
Those old westerns are the movies I grew up with on Saturday afternoons at the theater.
The political graveyards are full of people who don't respond.
It's something to see a satellite being launched from another satellite.
I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.
I can't say I've ever had a dream about space or that I ponder it all the time.
Everywhere that Americans spread off the Eastern seaboard, heading west across this country, they put up the schoolhouse first, hired a schoolteacher, and put all the kids in school.
People keep talking about how we have to go to Mars. We may want to go to Mars sometime.
I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.
As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.
To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.
If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest.
There are times when you devote yourself to a higher cause than personal safety.
Zero G and I feel fine.
When others kid me about being bald, I simply tell them that the way I figure it, the good Lord only gave men so many hormones, and if others want to waste theirs on growing hair, that's up to them.
A lot of people ask...why a man is willing to risk... Well, we've got to do it. We're going into an age of exploration that will be bigger than anything the world has ever seen... If a man faces up to the (unknown) and takes the dare of the future, he can have some control over his destiny.
We have an infinite amount to learn both from nature and from each other.
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