Astronaut Quotes & Sayings

We are all astronauts on spaceship earth — Wubbo Ockels

He had the face of a floating astronaut who had lost his tether and had only one chance to grab a lifeline or forever drift away into endless black. I knew that feeling, the sense of panic that stretched time, turning seconds into years, and the deep pain that came from being hurt by not one person but many, a gang of bullies that expanded into a neighborhood and then into a community, until you questioned the whole world. — Lissa Price

Why are hemorrhoids called hemorrhoids and asteroids called asteroids? Wouldn't it make more sense if it was the other way around? But if that was true, then a proctologist would be an astronaut. — Robert Schimmel

I ran the astronaut school for six years, and I was the commandant and when I finished in '65, 26 of my guys went into space as NASA astronauts that I trained. — Chuck Yeager

Then he asked if I didn't like things changing. And I said I wouldn't mind things changing if I became an astronaut, for example, which is one of the biggest changes you can imagine, apart from becoming a girl or dying. — Mark Haddon

The problem is that people have tried to look away from space and from the meaning of the moon landing. I remember seeing a picture of an astronaut standing on the moon. It was up at Yale and someone has scrawled on it, 'So what?' That is the arrogance of the kind of academic narrowness one too often sees; it is trapped in its own predictable prejudices, its own stale categories. It is the mind dulled to the poetry of existence. It's fashionable now to demand some economic payoff from space, some reward to prove it was all worthwhile. Those who say this resemble the apelike creatures in 2001. They are fighting for food among themselves, while one separates himself from them and moves to the slab, motivated by awe. That is the point they are missing. He is the one who evolves into a human being; he is the one who understands the future. — Joseph Campbell

I'd love to go back to space, I don't know any astronaut who doesn't want to. — Helen Sharman

I always wanted to be an astronaut. — Jerry Hall

On the wall of his rehabilitation room was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, "We found nothing is impossible." That should be our motto. — Christopher Reeve

But in a way it's like looking at old photographs of yourself. There comes a point at which the record needs to be updated, because you've shed too many links with what you were. He doesn't quite know how it happened; all he knows is that he doesn't recognize himself in those stories any more, though he remembers the bursting feeling of writing them, something in himself massing and pushing irresistibly to be born. He hasn't had that feeling since; he almost thinks that to remain a writer he'd have to become one all over again, when he might just easily become an astronaut, or a farmer. It's as if he can't quite remember what drove him into words in the first place, all those years before, yet words are what he still deals in. I suppose it's a bit like marriage, he said. You build a whole structure on a period of intensity that's never repeated. It's the basis of your faith and sometimes you doubt it, but you never renounce it because too much of your life stands on that ground. — Rachel Cusk

A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again. — Burt Rutan

The advice I was given was just to make sure you look out of the window occasionally. It's something no astronaut ever gets tired of doing. — Helen Sharman

You think you want to be an astronaut, and then after a while you're a geo-major for whatever reason. That's just the way it is in college. — Rob Brown

To me, there is something superbly symbolic in the fact that an astronaut, sent up as assistant to a series of computers, found that he worked more accurately and more intelligently than they. Inside the capsule, man is still in charge. — Adlai Stevenson

One Chief Astronaut used to make a point of phoning the front desk at the clinic where applicants are sent for medical testing, to find out which ones treated the staff well - and which ones stood out in a bad way. The nurses and clinic staff have seen a whole lot of astronauts over the years, and they know what the wrong stuff looks like. A person with a superiority complex might unwittingly, right there in the waiting room, quash his or her chances of ever going to space. — Chris Hadfield

I've wanted to be an astronaut, a doctor, a vet - these are things I've said in interviews. Before that, I wanted to be a mermaid and a fairy — Natalie Portman

There was a small window when I wanted to be an astronaut. It may have coincided with not getting cast in a high school play. — Patrick J. Adams

Listening to critics is like letting Muhammad Ali decide which astronaut goes to the moon. — Robert Duvall

Just in case God isn't dead, our astronauts carry sidearms. — Ben Lerner

I've been lucky enough to do theatre, film, and television for a career. Unless I get offered a job as an astronaut, I won't stray too far from it. — Dexter Fletcher

Humans need challenges to overcome, just like a muscle needs resistance to grow. In a zero-gravity environment, an astronaut's muscles atrophy because there is no resistance. The government giving you a bunch of handouts and living your life for you is the equivalent of doing push-ups in outer space. Big government is like the void of space - it's massive, constantly expanding, and if we immerse ourselves in it, we'll simply wither away. — Adam Carolla

I have to admit that talking authoritatively about my students' stories can make me feel, at times, like an astronaut who has just landed on a new planet and insists on giving guided tours to its inhabitants. — Etgar Keret

It is an incredible treat and certainly one of the highlights of any astronaut's career to do a spacewalk. — Luca Parmitano

I don't particularly care about photographic authorship. Whether an astronaut who doesn't even have a viewfinder makes an image, a robotic camera, a military photographer, or Mike Light really doesn't matter. What matters is the context of the final photograph and the meaning it generates within that context. — Michael Light

It took me a long time to get selected as an astronaut. In fact, I applied for 20 years before I was selected. — John L. Phillips

And just when we were at the end of our design process there was the news that the Italian government and the U.S. government had signed an agreement to fly the first Italian astronaut on that flight. — Umberto Guidoni

On the day I started college in 1979, no woman had ever been on the United States Supreme Court or served as the Speaker of the House. None had been an astronaut or the solo anchor of a network evening news broadcast. Not one had been president of an Ivy League college or run a serious campaign for president. — Dee Dee Myers

I read in a book that the stars can take you anywhere. I've never wanted to be an astronaut because of the helmets. If I were up there on the moon, or by the Milky Way, I'd want to feel the stars round my head. I'd want my whole body to feel the space, the empty space and points of light. That's how dancers must feel, dancers and acrobats, just for a second, that freedom. — Jeanette Winterson

If you're the very luckiest kind of astronaut ever, your big payoff is that you get to visit a barren airless wasteland for five minutes, do some more math, and then go home - ice cream not guaranteed. — Lindy West

Opportunity could be defined in so many ways. There's one way of defining it, equality of opportunity, which is in fact the equality of capability, but the libertarians got there first and they have - like the Americans getting onto the moon, naming every crater after something like an astronaut - they have got there and named "opportunity" in a way that we cannot get ownership of now. — Amartya Sen

This is the thing about the service industry, you can get trained to be slick and hospitable in any situation and it serves you well the rest of your life. Once you figure out that everything is performance and you bow to that, learn to modulate, you can dissociate from the mothership of yourself like an astronaut floating in space. — Merritt Tierce

The Doctor: Doctor Song, you've got that face on again.
River: What face?
The Doctor: The "He's hot when he's clever" face.
River: This is my normal face.
The Doctor: Yes it is.
River: Oh, shut up.
The Doctor: Not a chance. — Steven Moffat

I remember all the kids picking their chosen career paths and I was thinking, If I'm an actor I can be an astronaut and a policeman and a firefighter. At the time I was so young that I actually thought actors were all of those things. — Chris Lowell

If there'd been an astronaut on the moon right then, I'm sure I could have seen him. Perhaps he could have looked down and seen me too ... the only one who could. — Lucy Christopher

Being a rock & roll star has become as legitimate a career option as being an astronaut or a policeman or a fireman. — Trent Reznor

When you read as many books as Klaus Baudelaire, you are going to learn a great deal of information that might not become useful for a long time. You might read a book that would teach you all about the exploration of outer space, even if you do not become an astronaut until you are eighty years old. You might read a book about how to preform tricks on ice skates, and then not be forced to preform these tricks for a few weeks. You might read a book on how to have a successful marriage, when the only women you will ever love has married someone else and then perished one terrible afternoon. — Lemony Snicket

Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also. — Claude Nicollier

What I was most curious about was why Armstrong, a top U.S. Navy test pilot, flying the most advanced aircraft in the world, would want to join the astronaut corps in 1962, which included chimpanzees and monkeys. — Douglas Brinkley

Amy: I had something I wanted to tell him. Stuff always gets in the way.
Canton: Stuff does that. — Steven Moffat

It's okay. I'm a rhinoceros astronaut. — Brandon Sanderson

And I was also proud of living up to NASA's belief that I was capable of commanding the world's spaceship. On my first day at JSC, I hadn't been an obvious candidate. I was a pilot. I didn't have much leadership experience to speak of at all. Worse: I was a Canadian pilot without much leadership experience. Square astronaut, round hole. But somehow, I'd managed to push myself through it, and here was the truly amazing part: along the way, I'd become a good fit. It had only taken 21 years. — Chris Hadfield

I loved dinosaurs, I loved space, and I thought maybe I'd be the first paleo-astronaut. — Bill Maris

As an astronaut, you have a very defined set of tasks to do. Those tasks may require you to work 60, 70 or 80 hours a week. — Mae Jemison

To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over. — Chris Hadfield

Everybody knows what the moon is, everybody knows what this decade is, and everybody can tell a live astronaut who returned from the moon from one who didn't — Wernher Von Braun

The library was home away from home to my mom, and my family. We had spent every Sunday afternoon there since I was a little boy, wandering around the stacks, pulling out every book with a picture of a pirate ship, a knight, a soldier, or an astronaut. My mom used to say, This is my church, Ethan. This is how we keep the Sabbath holy in our family. — Kami Garcia

Ever since I was a kid, I always wanted to be an astronaut. — Drew Van Acker

Well before I was in a band, I wanted to be everything from a vet, an astronaut, an archeologist was a big one. It could be very wide-ranging because I had a lot of different interests including music so I'm very happy where I wound up. — Joan Jett

NEEMO missions are a challenging and exciting aspect of astronaut training. The research we conduct during those missions allows us to test new technologies and exploration concepts in conditions similar to the ones we'll experience in space. They are a great opportunity to help me expand my knowledge and develop new tools for future space exploration. — Jeremy Hansen

Blinking, twinkling, burning bright
Are all the stars that light the night.
Dippers, Ursa's and Orion too,
But don't forget the star in you. — Paul The Astronaut

Every single astronaut who has come back from space comes back determined to do more to protect it. — Richard Branson

I had a lot of things I wanted to do ... I want to be a teacher ... I also want to be an astronaut ... and also make my own cake shop ... I want to go to the sweets bakery and say "I want one of everything", ohhhh I wish I could live life five times over ... Then I'd be born in five different places, and I'd stuff myself with different food from around the world ... I'd live five different lives with five different occupations ... and then, for those five times ... I'd fall in love with the same person ... — Tite Kubo

A plane flies overhead and inside it is a writer who has spent most of his life as a law clerk, even though he's always known deep down that he's a writer. For the first time, he's worked out what he wants to write, what the truth really is. He begs a napkin and a pen off the air hostess and he writes down the most beautiful sentence ever written, as the engine catches fire outside and the plane starts its plummet to the ground. It doesn't matter to him. It's the only sentence he's ever written and it is the last and no part of him cares. The sentence falls through the air with singed, black edges and comes to rest in a tree, in a park, miles away. One day, around ten years from now, an old widow of an astronaut will find it when a strong breeze finally blows it from its hiding place. She will read it and she will weep. — Pleasefindthis

the astronaut David R. Scott performed the feather and lead weight experiment and found that indeed they did hit the ground at the same time. — Stephen Hawking

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

This was exactly what I experienced in space: immense gratitude for the opportunity to see Earth from this vantage, and for the gift of the planet we've been given. — Ron Garan

I am also planning to leave a lot of things undone. Part of life's mystery depends on future possibilities, and mystery is an elusive quality which evaporates when sampled frequently, to be followed by boredom. For example, catching various types of fish is on my list of good things to do, but I would be reluctant to rush into it, even if i had the time. I want no part of destroying fishing as a mysterious sport. — Michael Collins

Is there any other job that beats being an astronaut? Who didn't want to be an astronaut? That is my question. — Luca Parmitano

Before I settled on music, I wanted to be an archaeologist, an astronaut, all sorts of really diverse things. — Joan Jett

He addressed the class ... in a soft, stupefied, increasingly breathless tone like an astronaut pleading with a mad supercomputer to open an airlock. — Michael Chabon

I'm fully aware," Firth told a reporter for the English magazine Now, "that if I were to change professions tomorrow, become an astronaut and be the first man to land on Mars, the headlines in the newspapers would read: 'Mr. Darcy Lands on Mars. — Colin Firth

He was an astronaut without a suit, but he was still breathing. — John Corey Whaley

As a kid, I imagined lots of different scenarios for my life. I would be an astronaut. Maybe a cartoonist. A famous explorer or rock star. Never once did I see myself standing under the window of a house belonging to some druggie named Carbine, waiting for his yard gnome to steal his stash so I could get a cab back to a cheap motel where my friend, a neurotic, death-obsessed dwarf, was waiting for me so we could get on the road to an undefined place and a mysterious Dr. X, who would cure me of mad cow disease and stop a band of dark energy from destroying the universe. — Libba Bray

Two months after I got out of test pilot school, I saw an advert that said NASA was recruiting more astronauts. The best job you could have as a test pilot was being an astronaut, so I volunteered. — Charles Duke

The Moon did not consider that amongst the stars, there is no end. There is no fading away. There is no death in a place filled with forever, even though we all trick ourselves into thinking that this life we live now is the only life we will ever live. — Paul The Astronaut

Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. And there is some group of people that may or may not be associated with government at this point that have this knowledge. They have been attempting to conceal this knowledge. People in high level government have very little, if any, valid information about this. It has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn't come out. — Edgar D. Mitchell

I expected a dozen people packed into our cabin again but it's only her and Ben, the guy with the buzz cut and black glasses who looks like a young astronaut. Clean-cut and stupendously brilliant.

Cordero's not too far off. She's businesslike in her dark suit, but there's also a military assuredness to her actions. I get the feeling that when a situation takes a nosedive she knows where the emergency exits are and how to deploy the water slide. — Veronica Rossi

We are limited only by our imagination and our will to act. — Ron Garan

By my mid-30s, I just thought, 'This is not going to happen. I am never going to become an astronaut in the U.K.' — David Mackay

I've never had a musical career. So I think it's been unaffected. I play the accordion. In terms of thinking of it as a musical career, I think it's sort of like calling yourself an astronaut because you have a shiny suit. — Daniel Handler

Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars. — Buzz Aldrin

So [Polaroid's Dr. Edwin] Land, at 75, went off to spend the remainder of his life doing pure science, trying to crack the code of color vision. The man is a national treasure. I don't understand why people like that can't be held up as models: This is the most incredible thing to be - not an astronaut, not a football player - but this. — Steve Jobs

If one starts with the anatomical difference, which even a patriarchal Viennese novelist was able to see was destiny, then one begins to understand why men and women don't get on very well within marriage, or indeed in any exclusive sort of long-range sexual relationship. He is designed to make as many babies as possible with as many different women as he can get his hands on, while she is designed to take time off from her busy schedule as astronaut or role model to lay an egg and bring up the result. Male and female are on different sexual tracks, and that cannot be changed by the Book or any book. Since all our natural instincts are carefully perverted from birth, it is no wonder that we tend to be, if not all of us serial killers, killers of our own true nature. — Gore Vidal

I think doing something of your life is something that you've got deep inside, whether it's to, whether you want to be an astronaut or a, whether you want to do science, or whether you want to be a movie star, or whatever. — Philippe Perrin

We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves. — Ray Bradbury

Not everyone can be an astronaut and go into space, some people with sufficient resources can purchase and fly sub-orbitally thanks to various companies and for more money (considerably) fly into orbit. — Buzz Aldrin

I am surprised nothing has been made of the fact that astronaut Neil Armstrong carried no sidearms when he landed on the moon. — Arthur Goldberg

As a young boy, I was very interested - as I still am - in all sorts of adventure and exploration. I thought about being an astronaut, a dinosaur scientist, or marine biologist, but I clearly was drawn to the ocean and to the water. — Brian Skerry

I Was so Drunk, I Thought a Tube of Toothpaste Was Astronaut Food. — Will Ferrell

Back in the days of Apollo, sending humans to the moon was the only viable way to get the scientific data we wanted. But now, with our computer and robotics technology, there's very little an astronaut can do on Mars that a well-designed rover can't. — Andy Weir

A mathematician tells you that the wall of warped space prevents the Moon from flying out of its orbit yet can't tell you why an astronaut can go back and forth across that same space. — Bill Gaede

I don't have to go into outer space to write about an astronaut. — Geoffrey S. Fletcher

My neighborhood was rough, but I live a great life now. I don't fight that much now. I don't look for it anyway, but if someone hits your mother, whether you're a star, an accountant, or an astronaut or anything ... I mean it's your mother, so I lost my mind. — Shia Labeouf

To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true. — Eugene Cernan

I do not know your woes, Humans, but I do know that they are abundant. Believe in each other, and stand together, and you will conquer them all. — Paul The Astronaut

I need some encouragement. I need to ask myself, "What would an Apollo astronaut do?" He'd drink three whiskey sours, drive his Corvette to the launchpad, then fly to the moon in a command module smaller than my Rover. Man those guys were cool. — Andy Weir

If you haven't noticed yet, working sucks. Unless you are a racecar driver or an astronaut or Beyonce, working is completely and utterly devoid of awesome. It is hard, it lasts all day, the lighting is generally fluorescent, and, apparently, drinking at your desk is frowned upon. If you ever needed to ruin someone's fun, I mean really poop a party, just move things to the workplace. Fun terminated. — Aisha Tyler

my house only felt like a home underwater, in floods; my father was an astronaut because to me stars or the distant flashing of satellites seemed closer than wherever he was; when — Neil Hilborn

The suffix 'naut' comes from the Greek and Latin words for ships and sailing. Astronaut suggests 'a sailor in space.' Chimponaut suggests 'a chimpanzee in sailor pants'. — Mary Roach

There's a lot of things I nerd out over. Quantum Mechanics. I also love Dungeons and Dragons. I want to be an astronaut. — Analeigh Tipton

Then there are also the quiet deaths. How about the day you realized you weren't going to be an astronaut or the queen of Sheba? Feel the silent distance between yourself and how you felt as a child, between yourself and those feelings of wonder and splendor and trust. Feel the mature fondness for who you once were, and your current need to protect innocence wherever you make might find it. The silence that surrounds the loss of innocence is a most serious death, and yet it is necessary for the onset of maturity.

What about the day we began working not for ourselves, but rather with the hope that our kids have a better life? Or the day we realize that, on the whole, adult life is deeply repetitive? As our lives roll into the ordinary, when our ideals sputter and dissipate, as we wash the dishes after yet another meal, we are integrating death, a little part of us is dying so that another part can live. — Matthew Sanford

I wanted to be an actor, an astrologer, an astronaut; a lot of different things were going through my mind. But I also wanted to play guitar. I mentioned to my parents that I wanted an electric guitar for Christmas. They got me one! I sat there all Christmas morning making a lot of loud horrible noise. — Joan Jett

I saw sunrises fade and burn among fleets of sparks. The moon blossomed
like a lily carved of bone ...
The Death of the Astronaut, page 390. — Lewis Turco

So much goes into doing a transplant operation. All the way from preparing the patient, to procuring the donor. It's like being an astronaut. The astronaut gets all the credit, he gets the trip to the moon, but he had nothing to do with the creation of the rocket, or navigating the ship. He's the privileged one who gets to drive to the moon. I feel that way in some of these more difficult operations, like the heart transplant. — Denton Cooley

I've always known I'd be a bank robber. So judge all you want, ladies and gentlemen. Because you never did become an astronaut. — Joey Comeau

When I was a kid, they'd say, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" kids would go Wonder Woman, an astronaut. Do you know what I always said? World domination - so we're on our way. — Terri Irwin

As a kid, I was obsessed with space. Well, I was obsessed with nuclear science too, to a point, but before that, I was obsessed with space, and I was really excited about, you know, being an astronaut and designing rockets, which was something that was always exciting to me. — Taylor Wilson

And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian. — Chris Hadfield

I think there would be no shortage of applicants to the government astronaut corps to be settlers on the planet Mars. And I think this would be very inspiring. — Buzz Aldrin

An astronaut is someone who's able to make good decisions quickly, with incomplete information, when the consequences really matter. I didn't miraculously become one either, after just eight days in space. But I did get in touch with the fact that I didn't even know what I didn't know. — Chris Hadfield