A star-gazing, rocket-riding, moon-walking quote collection

Earth is too small a basket for mankind to keep all its eggs in.

— Robert A. Heinlein

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

There are so many benefits to be derived from space exploration and exploitation; why not take what seems to me the only chance of escaping what is otherwise the sure destruction of all that humanity has struggled to achieve for 50,000 years?

— Isaac Asimov, speech at Rutgers University

In the long run, a single-planet species will not survive.

— Mike Griffin, NASA administrator, 'Rolling Stone' magazine, 23 February 2006

But does Man have any 'right' to spread through the universe? Man is what he is, a wild animal with the will to survive, and (so far) the ability, against all competition. Unless one accepts that, anything one says about morals, war, politics, you name it, is nonsense. Correct morals arise from knowing what man is, not what do-gooders and well-meaning old Aunt Nellies would like him to be. The Universe will let us know—later—whether or not Man has any 'right' to expand through it.

— Robert A. Heinlein, 'Starship Troopers.'

A new space race has begun, and most Americans are not even aware of it. This race is not [about] political prestige or military power. This new race involves the whole human species in a contest against time.

— Ben Bova

Beyond a critical point within a finite space, freedom diminishes as numbers increase. . . . The human question is not how many can possibly survive within the system, but what kind of existence is possible for those who do survive.

— Frank Herbert, 'Dune.'

More important than the material issue . . . the opening of a new, high frontier will challenge the best that is in us . . . the new lands waiting to be built in space will give us new freedom to search for better governments, social systems, and ways of life . . .

— Gerard K. O'Neill, 'The High frontier,' 1976

From our descendents' perches on other plants or distant space cities, they will look back at our achievement with wonder at our courage and audacity and with appreciation of our accomplishments, which assured the future in which they live.

— Walter Cronkite, 2000.

The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program. And if we become extinct because we don't have a space program, it'll serve us right!

— Larry Niven, quoted by Arthur Clarke in an interview online at space.com, 2001.

I don't think the human race will survive the next thousand years, unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I'm an optimist. We will reach out to the stars.

— Stephen Hawking, interview in 'The Daily Telegraph,' 2001.

The long-term survival of the human race is at risk as long as it is confined to a single planet. Sooner or later, disasters such as an asteroid collision or nuclear war could wipe us all out. But once we spread out into space and establish independent colonies, our future should be safe. There isn't anywhere like the Earth in the solar system, so we would have to go to another star. If we used chemical fuel rockets like the Apollo mission to the moon, the journey to the nearest star would take 50,000 years. This is obviously far too long to be practical, so science fiction has developed the idea of warp drive, which takes you instantly to your destination. Unfortunately, this would violate the scientific law which says that nothing can travel faster than light. However, we can still within the law, by using matter/antimatter annihilation, at least reach just below the speed of light. With that, it would be possible to reach the next star in about six years, though it wouldn't seem so long for those on board.

— Stephen Hawking, accepting the Royal Society's Copley Medal, 2006.

The purpose of the space program is not to maintain superiority in space but to build a bridge to the stars before the sun dies. Homo loquaz (man speaking) or Homo sapiens (rational man) is the only thoughtful creature in the universe, so far as we know. If he doesn't build himself that bridge to escape across, all is lost.

— Tom Wolfe, author of The Right Stuff, in Popular Mechanics, September 2007.

We hope someday, having solved the problems we face, to join a community of galactic civilizations.

— President Jimmy Carter, 1977

The question that will decide our destiny is not whether we shall expand into space. It is: shall we be one species or a million? A million species will not exhaust the ecological niches that are awaiting the arrival of intelligence.

— Freeman Dyson

No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.

— Henry Miller

It's really incumbent upon us as life's agents to extend life to another planet. I think that being a multi-planet species will significantly increase the richness and scope of the human experience.

— Elon Musk, founder of XpaceX, interview in 'Ad Astra,' Summer 2006.

To our knowledge, life exists on only one planet, Earth. If something bad happens, it's gone. I think we should establish life on another planet—Mars in particular—but we 're not making very good progress. SpaceX is intended to make that happen.

— Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, 'Time' 5 March 2007

Let me end with an explanation of why I believe the move into space to be a human imperative. It seems to me obvious in too many ways to need listing that we cannot much longer depend upon our planet's relatively fragile ecosystem to handle the realities of the human tomorrow. Unless we turn human growth and energy toward the challenges and promises of space, our only other choice may be the awful risk, currently demonstrable, of stumbling into a cycle of fratricide and regression which could end all chances of our evolving further or of even surviving.

— Gene Roddenberry, airplanetary Report Vol. 1,' 1981.

Today the human race is a single twig on the tree of life, a single species on a single planet. Our condition can thus only be described as extremely fragile, endangered by forces of nature currently beyond our control, our own mistakes, and other branches of the wildly blossoming tree itself. Looked at this way, we can then pose the question of the future of humanity on Earth, in the solar system, and in the galaxy from the standpoint of both evolutionary biology and human nature. The conclusion is straightforward: Our choice is to grow, branch, spread and develop, or stagnate and die.

— Robert Zubrin, 'Entering Space,' 1999.

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, Armageddon, 'On Flying,' sct. 3, 1987.

When the history of our galaxy is written, and for all any of us know it may already have been, if Earth gets mentioned at all it won't be because its inhabitants visited their own Moon. That first step, like a newborn's cry, would be automatically assumed. What would be worth recording is what kind of civilization we earthlings created and whether or not we ventured out to other parts of the galaxy.

— Astronaut Michael Collins, 'Liftoff,' 1988

A few million years ago there were no humans. Who will be here a few million years hence? In all the 4.6-billion-year history of our planet, nothing much ever left it. But now, tiny unmanned exploratory spacecraft from Earth are moving, glistening and elegant, through the solar system. We have made a preliminary reconnaissance of twenty worlds, among them all of the planets visible to the naked eye, all those wandering nocturnal lights that stirred our ancestors toward understanding and ecstasy. If we survive, our time will be famous for two reasons: that at this dangerous moment of technological adolescence we managed to avoid self-destruction; and because this is the epoch in which we began our journey to the stars.

— Carl Sagan. 'Cosmos,' 1980.

Once the threshold is crossed when there is a self-sustaining level of life in space, then life's long-range future will be secure irrespective of any of the risks on Earth. . . . Will this happen before our technological civilization disintegrates, leaving this as a might-have-been? Will the self-sustaining space communities be established before a catastrophe sets back the prospect of any such enterprise, perhaps foreclosing it forever? We live at what could be a defining moment for the cosmos.

— Martin Rees, England's Astronomer Royal, 'Our Final Hour,' 2003.

The question to ask is whether the risk of traveling to space is worth the benefit. The answer is an unequivocal yes, but not only for the reasons that are usually touted by the space community: the need to explore, the scientific return, and the possibility of commercial profit. The most compelling reason, a very long-term one, is the necessity of using space to protect Earth and guarantee the survival of humanity.

— William E. Burrows, 'The Wall Street Journal,' 2003

As long as we are a single-planet species, we are vulnerable to extinction by a planetwide catastrophe, natural or self-induced. Once we become a multiplanet species, our chances to live long and prosper will take a huge leap skyward.

— David Grinspoon, Slate online magazine, 7 January 2004.

n time, [a Martian] colony would grow to the point of being self- sustaining. When this stage was reached, humanity would have a precious insurance policy against catastrophe at home. During the next millennium there is a significant chance that civilization on Earth will be destroyed by an asteroid, a killer plague or a global war. A Martian colony could keep the flame of civilization and culture alive until Earth could be reverse-colonized from Mars.

— Paul Davies, ASU physicist, cosmologist & astrobiologist,  'The New York Times,' 2004

For me the singe overarching goal of human space flight is the human settlement of the solar system . . . no greater purpose is possible.

— Mike Griffin, NASA administrator, Congressional testimony 2004.

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, on the 37th Anniversary of the Apollo 11 Landing, July 2006

The extension of life beyond Earth is the most important thing we can do as a species.

— Elon Musk, SpaceX founder, 'Ad Astra' Summer 2008.

Remember this: once the human race is established on more than one planet and especially, in more than one solar system, there is no way now imaginable to kill off the human race.

— Robert Heinlein

Perchance, coming generations will not abide the dissolution of the globe, but, availing themselves of future inventions in aerial locomotion, and the navigation of space, the entire race may migrate from the earth, to settle some vacant and more western planet.... It took but little art, a simple application of natural laws, a canoe, a paddle, and a sail of matting, to people the isles of the Pacific, and a little more will people the shining isles of space. Do we not see in the firmament the lights carried along the shore by night, as Columbus did? Let us not despair or mutiny.

— Henry David Thoreau