Spacefaring Quotes & Sayings

All civilizations become either spacefaring or extinct. — Carl Sagan

I have a problem,' said Nikolai Nikolaivitch Asterinov, getting to his feet. 'I have a problem, that I wish to share with this, our science fiction writers' collective. We are to concoct a race of aliens against which humanity can unite. Spacefaring aliens, no?' 'Yes, of course.' 'Then this is my problem. We know the party line. The philosophy of the party has always been that capitalistic Western fantasies of launching rockets to other planets will always be doomed by the internal contradictions of the competitive inefficiency of capitalism itself. Only the combined and unified effort of a whole people would be able to achieve so monumental an achievement as interstellar flight. No capitalist race could ever achieve something as sophisticated as interstellar flight; only communists could do this. Now, how can it be that these evil aliens are able to build spaceships and fly across the void? Surely they are not communists? — Adam Roberts

Mathematics is the queen of science, and arithmetic the queen of mathematics. — Carl Friedrich Gauss

I'm 25 and just trying to understand women. Obviously, that is a process that never ends. — Bryan Lee O'Malley

I'm an entertainer and I really enjoy entertaining. I think if you're going to really be what you say you are, you have to really live it, work it, practice it, and think it. — Bernie Mac

There's an old saying in the space community: 'If God wanted us to be a spacefaring species, he would have given us a moon'. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

You don't have to live the blues to play the blues. — Herbie Mann

There were those within NASA who believed, and would continue to believe for decades into the future, that the government's decision to put all its chips on a short-term strategy to beat the Soviets came at the cost of the opportunity to turn humans into a truly spacefaring species. — Margot Lee Shetterly

Art is not just about what's great or expensive or scandalous or famous. It's a mirror we hold up that looks different to everyone who sees it, and whose beauty lies as much in us, and our capacity to dream ... — Michael Kimmelman

Space travel leading to skylife is vital to human survival, because the question is not whether we will be hit by an asteroid, but when. A planetary culture that does not develop spacefaring is courting suicide. All our history, all our social progress and growing insight will be for nothing if we perish. No risk of this kind, however small it might be argued to be, is worth taking, and no cost to prevent it is too great. No level of risk is acceptable when it comes to all or nothing survival. — Gregory Benford

You and everyone else on the planet," I said. "Nobody actually knows, and they won't tell us, so everybody sits around guessing and theorizing, and it's all kind of pointless. Maybe they're spacefaring micemen from Planet Cheese and they've come for our provolone. — Rick Yancey

I'm theologically in line with the Roman Catholic Church. I believe in the authority of the church, but I also have tremendous respect for my brothers and sisters in other Christian faiths. — Marco Rubio

No civilization can possibly survive to an interstellar spacefaring phase unless it limits its numbers.
Any society with a marked population explosion will be forced to devote all its energies and technological skills to feeding and caring for the population on its home planet. This is a very powerful conclusion and is in no way based on the idiosyncrasies of a particular civilization. On any planet, no matter what its biology or social system, an exponential increase in population will swallow every resource. Conversely, any civilization that engages in serious interstellar exploration and colonization must have exercised zero population growth or something very close to it for many generations. — Carl Sagan

If God wanted man to become a spacefaring species, he would have given man a moon. — Krafft Arnold Ehricke

Since, in the long run, every planetary civilization will be endangered by impacts from space, every surviving civilization is obliged to become spacefaring
not because of exploratory or romantic zeal, but for the most practical reason imaginable: staying alive ... If our long-term survival is at stake, we have a basic responsibility to our species to venture to other worlds. — Carl Sagan