Top 827 Quotes & Sayings by Famous Astronauts

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.

Ultimately, leadership is not about glorious crowning acts. It's about keeping your team focused on a goal and motivated to do their best to achieve it, especially when the stakes are high and the consequences really matter. It is about laying the groundwork for others' success, and then standing back and letting them shine.

There is still no cure for the common birthday.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine.

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 looks so petty.

I hope that China will continue with space exploration. It would be logical to have international co-operation. I hope that it will come about and that I can be involved in it.

We really have the most beautiful planet in our solar system. None other can sustain life like we know it. None other has blue water and white clouds covering colorful landmasses filled with thriving, beautiful, living things like human beings.

The James Webb Space Telescope was specifically designed to see the first stars and galaxies that were formed in the universe.

I am humbled and excited by new opportunities for me to support and share the amazing work NASA is doing to help us travel farther into the solar system and work with the next generation of science and technology leaders.

I like to think of ideas as potential energy. They're really wonderful, but nothing will happen until we risk putting them into action.

Know what it is that drives you - motivates you - and pursue it. Endeavor to work to make it happen.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

Every day is a good day when you're floating. Your whole life you spend walking around Earth and then all of a sudden you get to fly like you've dreamed of.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence. 'Who are we? Where are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going?'... I don't know. I don't have any answers to those questions. I don't know what's over there around the corner. But I want to find out.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

When you have an asteroid threatening Earth, it's uncertain where it's going to hit until the last minute; the decision to take action has to be coordinated by the international community.

You need nerves of steel if climbing aboard a rocket is your career path.

John Glenn craved the publicity. I think even John would admit that. When he went into politics, that became pretty obvious! He knew how to do public relations.

Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!

I touch the future. I teach.

The path from dreams to success does exist. May you have the vision to find it, the courage to get on to it, and the perseverance to follow it.

If I could talk to my younger self, I would just say that the path to great things is filled with a lot of stumbles, suffering, and challenges along the way. But if you have the right attitude and know that hard times will pass - and you get up each time - you will reach your destination.

The moon is very rugged.

I've always enjoyed traveling and having experience with different cultures and different people. But it's also a wonderful thing to be able to benefit and enable research, not only in our country but around the world.

I've already written 300 space poems. But I look upon my ultimate form as being a poetic prose. When you read it, it appears to be prose, but within the prose you have embedded the techniques of poetry.

I tell students that the opportunities I had were a result of having a good educational background. Education is what allows you to stand out.

And, obviously as a, as one who likes to travel around myself a lot, I think the Earth is a beautiful place. And, I'm looking forward to some new perspectives.

It's only when you're flying above it that you realize how incredible the Earth really is.

Do good work.

Canada and space are a natural fit.

If you end up doing what you are passionate about, the journey is so easy.

Our shuttle crew is four people, because we're going to transfer a crew up to station, so all the jobs are divided between four people rather than five or six people. So it's been busy.

We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast.

I was, I remember, I still remember when the first time I pointed the telescope at the sky and I saw Saturn with the rings. It was a beautiful image.

I took a Russian class at Notre Dame. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would fly someday in a Russian spacecraft with two cosmonauts, speaking only Russian.

The building of the International Space Station is something wonderful, and it will show us how to take the next step beyond low-Earth orbit.

My walk on the moon lasted three days. My walk with God will last forever.

My odyssey to become an astronaut kind of started in grad school, and I was working, up at MIT, in space robotics-related work; human and robot working together.

Researchers can measure what kind of angles your legs take up during the day when they're just trailing around behind you in weightless conditions, and what kind of impacts you feel during your exercise. They're going to compare that with what we do on the ground.

I see Earth! It is so beautiful!

I believe that these extra-terrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets. Most astronauts were reluctant to discuss UFOs.

The Next Generation Space Telescope, which will be located much further away from the Earth than the Hubble Space Telescope presently is, will also explore the infrared part of the spectrum.

Exploration is really the essence of the human spirit.

Most kids probably dream of becoming an astronaut. I was just the one that never grew out of it.

On Earth, men are seen as superior because of their physical strength, but it means nothing in space, where there is no gravity.

Basically, all my life I'd been told you can't do that because you're female. So I guess I just didn't pay any attention. I just went ahead and did what I could and then, when the stars aligned, I was ready.

Any idiot can get an airplane off the ground, but an aviator earns his keep by bringing it back anytime, anywhere, under any circumstances that man and God can dream up.

It's a great view from here. I'm having the time of my life.

It is difficult to express in words the feelings of happiness and pride which fill me.

If you look at astronauts closely, their eyes look kind of puffy. And it gives you this mild headache. But one of the advantages of that, if you will.

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.

Space is not an enterprise that belongs to the U.S. or to Russia or to China - it is a human endeavor and experience. And that's as it should be.

I fully expect that NASA will send me back to the moon as they treated Sen. Glenn, and if they don't do otherwise, why, then I'll have to do it myself.

I feel privileged and honored to have flown. It's been a tremendous ride, looking back on the legacy and accomplishments, like the Hubble telescope and the launching of the International Space Station in 1998.

When you talk to astronauts, the most profound thing when you finally go into space is the view - looking back at the planet - so I absolutely know for sure that that's going to change my perspective on our planet, and it's going to change my perspective on life, I think.

As a female pilot, the sacred rose garden in my heart is the motherland's blue sky.

I cycled on a crew assignment as the backup commander on Apollo 16 and would have flown Apollo 19 on a return mission to the moon. However, the last few missions of the Apollo Program were canceled for budgetary reasons. So I lost my second opportunity to land on the moon.

As a physician and as a pilot, I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and one foot in the flying world. Sometimes when the medical guys come in and speak medical stuff to the pilots, the pilots really don't know what they're saying.

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