Star Gazing Quotes - Page 3

• The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program.

  Larry Niven

  Space, Insightful, Dinosaurs

  "A Conversation With Arthur C. Clarke; An Author's Space Odyssey and His Stay at the Chelsea". www.nytimes.com. Ooctober 26, 1999.

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• Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.

  Alan Shepard

  Airplane, Roger, Aviation

  Jay Barbree, Alan Shepard, Deke Slayton (2011). “Moon Shot: The Inside Story of America's Apollo Moon Landings”, p.130, Open Road Media

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• I would not see our candle blown out in the wind. It is a small thing, this dear gift of life handed us mysteriously out of immensity. I would not have that gift expire... If I seem to be beating a dead horse again and again, I must protest: No! I am beating, again and again, living man to keep him awake and move his limbs and jump his mind... What's the use of looking at Mars through a telescope, sitting on panels, writing books, if it isn't to guarantee, not just the survival of mankind, but mankind surviving forever!

  Ray Bradbury

  Horse, Moving, Book

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• 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

  Sleep, Night, Sky

  Victor Hugo (1980). “Les misérables”, Viking Pr

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• 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

  Stars, Space, Trying

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• It is marvelous indeed to watch on television the rings of Saturn close; and to speculate on what we may yet find at galaxy's edge. But in the process, we have lost the human element; not to mention the high hope of those quaint days when flight would create one world. Instead of one world, we have star wars, and a future in which dumb dented human toys will drift mindlessly about the cosmos long after our small planet's dead.

  Gore Vidal

  Stars, War, Long

  "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations" by Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, (p. 861), 1993.

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• 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.

  John F. Kennedy

  Country, Mean, Space

  Address at Rice University on the Nation's Space Program, delivered 12 September 1962, Rice Stadium, Houston, Texas

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• 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

  Destiny, Space, Survival

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• 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

  Sports, War, Distance

  Robert A. Heinlein (1987). “Time Enough for Love”, p.228, Penguin

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• 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

  War, Years, Space

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• 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

  Believe, Space, People

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• 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

  Stars, Lying, Struggle

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• 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

  Stars, Men, Thinking

  John Fowles (2010). “Wormholes”, p.328, Random House

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• 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

  Responsibility, Sea, Other Worlds

  Carl Sagan, Ann Druyan (2011). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, p.337, Ballantine Books

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• It was a mind-blowing experience, it really was-absolutely an awesome thing. . . . As I got to the top I released a bag of M&Ms in the cockpit. It was amazing . . . Looking out that window, seeing the white clouds in the LA Basin, it looked like snow on the ground.

  Mike Melvill

  Clouds, White, Space

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• Imagine we could accelerate continuously at 1 g-what we're comfortable with on good old terra firma-to the midpoint of our voyage, and decelerate continuously at 1 g until we arrive at our destination. It would take a day to get to Mars, a week and a half to Pluto, a year to the Oort Cloud, and a few years to the nearest stars.

  Carl Sagan

  Stars, Clouds, Years

  Carl Sagan (1994). “Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space”, Random House Incorporated

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• I don't see it as a risk, I see it as living.

  Victoria Principal

  Space, Risk

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• 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.

  Buzz Aldrin

  Spiritual, Land, Space Flight

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• 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

  Beautiful, Moon, Islands

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

  Ovid

  Eye, Men, Sky

  Ovid, “Metamorphoses: Book The First”

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• It has always irked me as improper that there are still so many people for whom the sky is no more than a mass of random points of light. I do not see why we should recognize a house, a tree, or a flower here below and not, for example, the red Arcturus up there in the heavens as it hangs from its constellation Bootes, like a basket hanging from a balloon.

  M. C. Escher

  Flower, Light, Sky

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• Vision, in my view, is the cause of the greatest benefit to us, inasmuch as none of the accounts now given concerning the Universe would ever have been given if men had not seen the stars or the sun or the heavens. But as it is, the vision of day and night and of months and circling years has created the art of number and has given us not only the notion of Time but also means of research into the nature of the Universe. From these we have procured Philosophy in all its range, than which no greater boon ever has come or will come, by divine bestowal, unto the race of mortals.

  Plato

  Art, Stars, Philosophy

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• To find anything comparable with our forthcoming ventures into space, we must go back far beyond Columbus, far beyond Odysseus-far, indeed, beyond the first ape-man. We must contemplate the moment, now irrevocably lost in the mists of time, when the ancestor off all of us came crawling out of the sea.

  Arthur C. Clarke

  Men, Sea, Space

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

  Shannon Lucid

  Nice, Space, Would Be

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

  Shannon Lucid

  Space

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