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 W. Lee To Rise from Earth (1996); Variant: There are also websites which quote him as saying “I looked and looked and looked but I didn't see God.”

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

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

—   Roger Ebert

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

— Galileo Galilei. This is a paraphrase of a translation from Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (1632). A longer translation is “For when the sun draws up some vapors here, or warms a plant there, it draws these and warms this as if it had nothing else to do. Even in ripening a bunch of grapes, or perhaps just a single grape, it applies itself so effectively that it could not do more even if the goal of all its affairs were just the ripening of this one grape.”

Be humble for you are made of earth.
Be noble for you are made of stars.

— Serbian proverb

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

Telescopes are in some ways like time machines. They reveal galaxies so far away that their light has taken billions of years to reach us. We in astronomy have an advantage in studying the universe, in that we can actually see the past. We owe our existence to stars, because they make the atoms of which we are formed. So if you are romantic you can say we are literally starstuff. If you’re less romantic you can say we’re the nuclear waste from the fuel that makes stars shine. We've made so many advances in our understanding. A few centuries ago, the pioneer navigators learnt the size and shape of our Earth, and the layout of the continents. We are now just learning the dimensions and ingredients of our entire cosmos, and can at last make some sense of our cosmic habitat.

— Sir Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of Great Britian.

Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens…. My grandfather would say we’re part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don’t lose our place in it.

— Robert Fulghum

It seemed to be a necessary ritual that he should prepare himself for sleep by meditating under the solemnity of the night sky… a mysterious transaction between the infinity of the soul and the infinity of the universe.

— Victor Hugo

The heavens declare the glory of God;
the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
Day after day they pour forth speech;
night after night they reveal knowledge.
They have no speech, they use no words;
no sound is heard from them.
Yet their voice goes out into all the earth,
their words to the ends of the world.
In the heavens God has pitched a tent for the sun.
It is like a bridegroom coming out of his chamber,
like a champion rejoicing to run his course.
It rises at one end of the heavens
and makes its circuit to the other;
nothing is deprived of its warmth.

— Psalm 19:1-6. (New International Version)

Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. By day, space is one with the earth and with man - it is his sun that is shining, his clouds that are floating past; at night, space is his no more. When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.

— Henry Beston, The Outermost House, 1933.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

— Joseph Joubert

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

— Walt Whitman

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 (mp3)

— 4 October 1957.

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.

don’t tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go&mdashand he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

— Wernher von Braun, quoted in 'Space: Reach for the Stars', 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

The one necessary and sufficient reason we are called to the Space Frontier is buried deep within us.it is a feeling … [a] calling to go, to see, to do, to be — there. — We believe Homo Sapiens is a frontier creature. it is what we do, it defines what we are.

— Rick Tumlinson, Introduction — Who We are (Message 2 of the Frontier Files), 1995.

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&mdashthat's what living is all about.

— Michael Collins

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.

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 M. Serrano's The Farewell (1966).

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

— Psalms 19:1

It is a pity, in an age of rockets and space telescopes, that so few people have a direct acquaintance with the stars. Learning the stars and following their nightly courses across the sky brings a deep satisfaction born of familiarity with something both ancient and ageless.

— Richard Berry, Discover the Stars, 1987.

I know the stars are my home. I learned about them, needed them for survival in terms of navigation. I know where I am when I look up at the sky. I know where I am when I look up at the Moon; it's not just some abstract romantic idea, it's something very real to me. See, I’ve expanded my home.

— Eugene Cernan, astronaut and moonwalker, Life magazine, November 1988.

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. I watched the space program being born, and I would like to participate.

— 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.

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.

The flight experience itself is incredible. It’s addictive. It’s transcendent. It is a view of the grand plan of all things that is simply unforgettable.

— Scott Carpenter, astronaut. Interview with the Rocky Mountain News.

I wondered how I was ever going to get my work done because I just wanted to stay glued to the window.

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.

If there were beings who had always lived beneath the earth, in comfortable, well-lit dwellings, decorated with statues and pictures and furnished with all the luxuries enjoyed by persons thought to be supremely happy, and who though they had never come forth above the ground had learnt by report and by hearsay of the existence of certain deities and divine powers; and then if at some time the jaws of the earth were opened and they were able to escape from their hidden abode and to come forth into the regions which we inhabit; when they suddenly had sight of the earth and the seas and the sky, and came to know of the vast clouds and mighty winds, and beheld the sun, and realized not only its size and beauty but also its potency in causing the day by shedding light all over the sky, and, after night had darkened the earth, they then saw the whole sky spangled with stars, and the changing phases of the moon's light, now waxing and now waning, and the risings and settings of all these heavenly bodies and their courses fixed and changeless throughout all eternity, — when they saw these things, surely they would think that the gods exist and that these mighty marvels are their handiwork.

— Marcus Tullius Cicero, c. 30 B.C

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.

Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.

— George Santayana

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.

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago … had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

— Havelock Ellis, The Dance of Life, 1923.

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

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

I’d have given my right eye to be an astronaut.

— Jacqueline Cochran, quoted in L. Yount Women Aviators.

So let us then try to climb the mountain, not by stepping on what is below us, but to pull us up at what is above us, for my part at the stars; amen.

— M.C. Escher

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

— Helen Keller

The second best thing about space travel is that the distances involved make war very difficult, usually impractical, and almost always unnecessary. This is probably a loss for most people, since war is our race's most popular diversion, one which gives purpose and color to dull and stupid lives. But it is a great boon to the intelligent man who fights only when he must — never for sport.

— Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough For Love, 1973.

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

— Mark Twain

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.

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

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

Beam me up, Scotty

— commonly attributed to Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner) in the Star Trek original TV series and movies, but never actually uttered exactly as it is now used. It is imagined to be said to the chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” Scott, when a landing crew needs to be transported back to the Starship Enterprise. In the 1986 movie Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home we do at least hear him say, “Scotty, beam me up.” It is also possible to hear Shatner say the exact phrase in his audio adaptation of his novel Star Trek: The Ashes of Eden. James Doohan, the actor who played Scotty, used the phrase as the title of his 1996 autobiography Beam Me Up, Scotty: Star Trek's “Scotty” in his own words.

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 TV series and movies.

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

As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] dimished 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.

Anyone who has spent any time in space will love it for the rest of their lives. I achieved my childhood dream of the sky.

— Valentina Tereshkova (Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва).

Someday I would like to stand on the Moon, look down through a quarter of a million miles of space and say, “There certainly is a beautiful earth out tonight.”

— Lieutenant Colonel William H. Rankin, The Man Who Rode the Thunder.

Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain.

—   Ihab Hassan

That night I lie out under the stars again. The Pleiades are there winking at me. I am no longer on my way from one place to another. I have changed lives. My life now is as black and white as night and day; a life of fierce struggle under the sun, and peaceful reflection under the night sky. I feel as though I am floating on a raft far, far away from any world I ever knew.

— Ted Simon, Jupiter — s Travels.

No national sovereignty rules in outer space. Those who venture there go as envoys of the entire human race. Their quest, therefore, must be for all mankind, and what they find should belong to all mankind.

— President Lyndon B. Johnson, news conference, 29 August 1965.

Centuries hence, when current social and political problems may seem as remote as the problems of the Thirty Years' War are to us, our age may be remembered chiefly for one fact: It was the time when the inhabitants of the earth first made contact with the vast cosmos in which their small planet is embedded.

— Carl Sagan, Scientific American magazine, March 1975

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 (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin, Jr), 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&mdashwe mean to lead it.

— President John F. Kennedy

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

— William Wordsworth, 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' (also known as 'The Daffodils'), 1804.

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, written between 1841 and 1843.

If you want to see a picture painted as only the hand of God can paint, go with me to Saturn.

— John H. Thayer, Popular Astronomy magazine, March 1919.

we’re all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

— Oscar Wilde, spoken by Lord Darlington in the play Lady Windermere's Fan, first performed on 22 February 1892, and published in 1893.

O dark dark dark. They all go into the dark,
The vacant interstellar spaces, the vacant into the vacant

—   T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets, 1940.

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.

— Lady Violet Bonham Carter

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

I would not say that female cosmonauts are not welcomed in the Russian space program. I must say, however, that all spaceflight hardware, including spacesuits and spacecraft comfort assuring systems, were designed mostly by men and for men.

— Valentina Tereshkova (Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва), first woman in space, 1963.

If women can be railroad workers in Russia, why can't they fly in space?

— Valentina Tereshkova (Валенти́на Влади́мировна Терешко́ва).

What are we doing here? we’re reaching for the stars.

— Christa McAuliffe, regards entering the astronaut program, Time magazine 10 February 1986.

Without women, we stood in space on one leg only.

— Vladimir Dzanibekov, Soviet cosmonaut, regards the first space walk by a woman, The London Times, 11 August 1984.

I can't remember a single time [my parents] ever told me not to do something I wanted to do.

— Sally Ride, quoted in L. Yount Women Aviators.

I wanted to be a hairdresser when I grew up. I’d sit on the back of the sofa and my mother would sit in front of me, and as long as it didn't involve scissors or dye, she'd let me do whatever I wanted to her hair. All the women in my life were nurses, hairdressers, or secretaries, and that's why I thought my father would not support me in being a pilot. I can remember asking him, “what would you think if I told you I wanted to be a pilot when I grew up?” expecting him to say no or disagree. He said, “I think that would be fantastic.” Had he not said those words, I don’t know what would have happened to me.

— Susan Still, Lieutenant, United States Navy, Combat Pilot and Astronaut, quoted in C. Russo Women And Flight, 1997.

She's decisive, she's aggressive, she's proven she's capable with high-performance jets. We look for people with the capability to think on their feet and to be able to lead a team of people. We look for the best pilots out there, and if they happen to be women, great, but we’re just looking for the best.

— David Leestma, director of flight crew operations, Johnson Space Center. Regarding Astronaut Susan Still, 1997.

I’m honored to be the first woman to have the opportunity to command the shuttle. I don’t really think about that on a day-to-day basis because I really don’t need to.

— Air Force Col. Eileen Collins, first female Space Shuttle commander, 24 June 1999.

There was my mom and I had a wife for a long time and now there is my fianc — e. Eileen is in a long line of women who have given me orders.

— Jeffrey S. Ashby, shuttle pilot regards flying under Eileen Collins' command.

My daughter just thinks that all moms fly the Space Shuttle

— Air Force Col. Eileen Collins, first female Space Shuttle commander, 1999.

I think it is interesting that we have come back to star- and space ships. Jet will do for a transport shorthand; yet when man really reaches, across the vast seas of space, he still reaches in ships.

— John Fowles, Shipwreck, 1974.

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 magazine, 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.

— attributed to Robert A. Heinlein by many people (including NASA's 2003 Astronaut Fact Book), but source unknown.

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.

Flying through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

— Han Solo (played by Harrison Ford), scolding Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), in the 1977 movie Star Wars.

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, 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 magazine, 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 magazine, 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

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

we’re floating here on the shoulders of giants. This space station is the pinnacle of human achievement and international co-operation.

— Greg Chamitoff, during the last flight of the space shuttle Endeavour, STS-134, 27 May 2011.

It's just a bunch of junk up there.

— Harry Monroe, 1986.

One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions.

— attributed to Wernher von Braun, but also attriibuted to many others, including test pilot A. M. 'Tex' Johnston, and more recently Bill Nye 'the Science Guy.'

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

— attributed to Werner von Braun

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

— Werner von Braun, Chicago Sun Times newspaper, 10 July 1958.

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, 9 September, 1979.

Space is only 80 miles from every person on earth — far closer than most people are to their own national capitals.

— Daniel Deudney, introduction to Space: The high Frontier in Perspective, 1982.

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.

Going to space is going to be outstanding. I can't believe that's actually happening.