Famous Quotes & Sayings

Alan Shepard Quotes & Sayings

Enjoy the top 60 famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Alan Shepard.

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Famous Quotes By Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1346594

There's no question that all the generations got excited about the first flights, with Kennedy's inspiration to go to the moon, leaving the planet for the first time, and fortunately coming back. — Alan Shepard

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I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1571462

Why don't you light that candle ? — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1146977

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 570235

The last man on the moon, Gene Cernan, had paused for a final look at the black beauty of the world about him. He had a message to send home before departing. "As I take these last steps from the surface for some time in the future to come, I'd just like to record that America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. And as we leave the moon and Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and, God willing, we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind." It's been nearly four decades since he spoke those words. No American, no earth being has yet returned to the moon. Sadly, no one will again for decades to come. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 957201

Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 662413

Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2009839

So everything turned out fine, and we were given the opportunity to go to Washington and be briefed on the project of man in space, and given the opportunity to choose whether we wanted to get involved or not. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1065186

Eisenhower, his science adviser James Killian, and others in the White House didn't want to be reminded that the rocket was the same damn Jupiter-C that could have placed a satellite in orbit more than a year before Sputnik. The Army was told to keep that information quiet - in fact, to change the name of the rocket, and Jupiter-C became Juno 1. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1277894

Then I thought, with the same clubhead speed, the ball's going to go at least six times as far. There's absolutely no drag, so if you do happen to spin it, it won't slice or hook 'cause there's no atmosphere to make it turn. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1607011

I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2194246

You have to be there not for the fame and glory and recognition and being a page in a history book, but you have to be there because you believe your talent and ability can be applied effectively to operation of the spacecraft. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 178668

The excitement really didn't start to build until the trailer - which was carrying me, with a space suit with ventilation and all that sort of stuff - pulled up to the launch pad. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2200138

I think all of us certainly believed the statistics which said that probably 88% chance of mission success and maybe 96% chance of survival. And we were willing to take those odds. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1549588

You've done it in the simulator so many times, you don't have a real sense of being excited when the flight is going on. You're excited before, but as soon as the liftoff occurs, you are busy doing what you have to do. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2232804

I didn't mind studying. Obviously math and the physical science subjects interested me more than some of the more artistic subjects, but I think I was a pretty good student. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2124647

Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle? — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2026126

It is 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 Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 585025

Unfortunately, the suit is so stiff, I can't do this with two hands, but I'm going to try a little sand-trap shot here. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1658157

Miles and miles and miles. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1691489

I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1824053

Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1853608

You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1859188

I guess those of us who have been with NASA ... kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1895600

But when I was selected, after my very first tour of squadron duty, to become one of the youngest candidates for the test pilot school, I began to realize, maybe you are a little bit better. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1939939

On the periscope ... What a beautiful view. Cloud cover over Florida - three to four tenths near the eastern coast. Obscured up to Hatteras ... I can see [lake] Okeechobee. Identify Andros Island. Identify the reefs. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1971661

If somebody'd said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?' I would have say, 'No, no way.' But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 460682

We also knew it would be difficult, because of the financial condition of the family, for me to go to college. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1599344

It's been a long way, but we're here. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2045289

The suit was so clumsy, being pressurized, it was impossible to get two hands comfortably on the handle and it's impossible to make any kind of a turn. It was kind of a one-handed chili-dip. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2066084

Because of the suit I was wearing, I couldn't make a good pivot on the swing. And I had to hit the ball with one hand. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2132731

Of course, in our grade school, in those days, there were no organized sports at all. We just went out and ran around the school yard for recess. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 322945

You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 131218

There were protocols to meet for the historic occasion. On the lunar dust they placed mementoes for the five-deceased American and Soviet spacemen, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin (who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque's words, his voice carried throughout the world. "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind." There was yet another small cargo - private and precious - carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the three Apollo 1 astronauts and presented to him by their widows after that dreadful fire. — Alan Shepard

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Later, in the early teens, I used to ride my bike every Saturday morning to the nearest airport, ten miles away, push airplanes in and out of the hangars, and clean up the hangars. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2212062

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 2222185

When heavy cloud decks enveloped the planet, they created a whole new surface that had never before existed, of high mountain ranges, tumbling ravines. Sometimes the clouds would create huge cliffs, sheer walls miles high into which shadows fell to give them a startling sense of solidity, as though the whiteness below was some Antarctic winter mountain scene now spread across all the visible world. No oceans, no land surface, only that startling, shifting panorama, and then, suddenly, it became something else. Ethereal clouds. Some were misty, others wispy, but most were ghostlike. They appeared everywhere or strangely vanished, then showed up again, brushing the edges of islands and the shores of continents. They were members of the cloud family, a living race dancing and floating above the planetary surface. Astonished, awed, he had the strangest thought that perhaps this is what the angels could see . . . Deke gloried — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 81213

We wanted to be in great shape, we wanted to be able to cope with zero gravity, we wanted to be able to cope with accelerations and decelerations and so on. So all of us trained so that we were probably in the best physical condition we had ever been in up until that point. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1181333

I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 792081

We had some adverse conditions in the '60s, in the '70s and the '80s. The agency has risen above that in the past and will rise above that again. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 946430

I think the sense of family and family achievement, plus the discipline which I received there from that one-room school were really very helpful in what I did later on. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 780150

I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 961744

Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1020058

We need a continuing presence in space. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1020662

Of course I was delighted the flight was over, but I still had to worry about cleaning up inside the cabin, I had to worry about the hatch, how to get in the sling, and so on. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 765658

Whether you are an astronomer or a life scientist, geophysicist, or a pilot, you've got to be there because you believe you are good in your field, and you can contribute, not because you are going to get a lot of fame or whatever when you get back. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1080938

I woke up an hour before I was supposed to, and started going over the mental checklist: where do I go from here, what do I do? I don't remember eating anything at all, just going through the physical, getting into the suit. We practiced that so much, it was all rote. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1100419

We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space. — Alan Shepard

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The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 840713

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

Alan Shepard Quotes 1184058

The rocket had worked perfectly, and all I had to do was survive the reentry forces. You do it all, in a flight like that, in a rather short period of time, just 16 minutes as a matter of fact. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1241304

The first plane ride was in a homemade glider my buddy and I built. Unfortunately we didn't get more than four feet off the ground, because it crashed. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 657401

I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books. — Alan Shepard

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The rocket worked perfectly except for landing on the wrong planet. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1359734

The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1534713

It didn't matter who liked whom, or on what side a man might find himself, because they were all on the side of a world of very definite finite resources, and they would all suffer terrifying consequences if they drained to bare bones the world that had conceived the life of the human race, fostered and nurtured that life, which now threatened to contaminate and destroy - — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1543279

Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 610926

Neil's voice was calm, confident, most of all clear. "Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed." It was 4:17:42 P.M. EDT, Sunday, July 20, 1969. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 1553130

We worked with the engineers in the design and construction and testing phases in those various areas, then we would get back together at the end of the week and brief each other as to what had gone on. — Alan Shepard

Alan Shepard Quotes 596121

The same way people are now paying a couple thousand dollars to fly to other parts of the world, people will be paying $50,000 to spend a weekend on a space station. — Alan Shepard