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

The sky is the daily bread of the eyes.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson, journal entry, 25 May 1843.

The sky is the ultimate art gallery just above us.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Treading the soil of the moon, palpating its pebbles, tasting the panic and splendor of the event, feeling in the pit of one's stomach the separation from Terra—these form the most romantic sensation an explorer has ever known . . . this is the only thing I can say about the matter. The utilitarian results do not interest me.

— Vladimir Nabokov, regards the first moon landing, in the 'New York Times,' 21 July 1969.

It [the rocket] will free man from his remaining chains, the chains of gravity which still tie him to this planet. It will open to him the gates of heaven.

— Wernher von Braun

God has no intention of setting a limit to the efforts of man to conquer space.

— Pope Pius XII

I looked and looked but I didn't see God.

— Yuri Gagarin (Юрий Алексеевич Гагарин), 14 April 1961. Quoted in 'To Rise from Earth' (1996) by Wayne Lee; Variant: There are also websites which quote him as saying "I looked and looked and looked but I didn't see God."

think a future flight should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher . . .  we might get a much better idea of what we saw.

— Michael Collins, 9 November 1969

How quickly do we grow accustomed to wonders. I am reminded of the Isaac Asimov story Nightfall, about the planet where the stars were visible only once in a thousand years. So awesome was the sight that it drove men mad. We who can see the stars every night glance up casually at the cosmos and then quickly down again, searching for a Dairy Queen.

—  Roger Ebert

The sun, with all those planets revolving around it and dependent on it, can still ripen a bunch of grapes as if it had nothing else in the universe to do.

— Galileo Galilei

Be humble for you are made of earth.
Be noble for you are made of stars.

— Serbian proverb

Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world. . . .
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.

— Alfred Lord Tennyson, 'Ulysses,' 1842.

Following the light of the sun, we left the Old World.

— Inscription on Columbus' caravels

Sirius, the brightest star in the heavens.... My grandfather would say we're part of something incredibly wonderful - more marvelous than we imagine. My grandfather would say we ought to go out and look at it once in a while so we don't lose our place in it.

— Robert Fulghum

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

Learn to reverence night and to put away the vulgar fear of it, for, with the banishment of night from the experience of man, there vanishes as well a religious emotion, a poetic mood, which gives depth to the adventure of humanity. By day, space is one with the earth and with man - it is his sun that is shining, his clouds that are floating past; at night, space is his no more. When the great earth, abandoning day, rolls up the deeps of the heavens and the universe, a new door opens for the human spirit, and there are few so clownish that some awareness of the mystery of being does not touch them as they gaze. For a moment of night we have a glimpse of ourselves and of our world islanded in its stream of stars - pilgrims of mortality, voyaging between horizons across eternal seas of space and time. Fugitive though the instant be, the spirit of man is, during it, ennobled by a genuine moment of emotional dignity, and poetry makes its own both the human spirit and experience.

— Henry Beston, 'The Outermost House,' 1933.

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

— Joseph Joubert

Every cubic inch of space is a miracle.

— Walt Whitman

Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

— Captain James T. Kirk, start of every episode of the original TV series 'Star Trek.'

I'm interested in man's march into the unknown but to vomit in space is not my idea of a good time. Neither is a fiery crash with the vomit hovering over me.

— William Shatner, the actor who played Captain James T. Kirk, regards offer by Richard Branson to fly on Virgin Galactic, reported in Daily Mail newspaper, 6 September 2006.

I had the ambition to not only go farther than man had gone before, but to go as far as it was possible to go.

— Captain Cook

Why should we try for space travel? It cannot be a substance of any kind that can be expected to pay. It can only be something intangible, not involving haulage, which is at the same time more valuable. There is something like that: Knowledge.

— Willy Ley, 1945.

The beep beep sound of Sputnik (real audio)

— 4 October 1957.

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

— Ovid

Per Ardua, Ad Astra.

— "Through struggles, To the stars." Motto of the Royal Air Force, the Royal Australian Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and the Royal New Zealand Air Force. This phrase was used by Virgil in the 'Aeneid,' and also seen in H. Rider Haggard's novel 'The People of the Mist.' First selected and approved as the motto for the Royal Flying Corps on 15 March 1913.

Per Aspera, Ad Astra.

 — "Through hardships, To the stars." Motto of NASA and the South African Air Force. From Seneca the Younger.  Ad Astra is the title of the National Space Society magazine.

Don't tell me that man doesn't belong out there. Man belongs wherever he wants to go - and he'll do plenty well when he gets there.

— Dr. Wernher von Braun, in 'Time' magazine, 17 February 1958

Man is an artifact designed for space travel. He is not designed to remain in his present biologic state any more than a tadpole is designed to remain a tadpole.

— William Burroughs, 'Civilian Defense,' 1985

We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

— Gene Roddenberry

It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice, really; it's an imperative.

— Michael Collins

To go places and do things that have never been done before - that's what living is all about.

— Michael Collins

Once the hatch was opened, I turned the lock handle and bright rays of sunlight burst through it. I opened the hatch and dust from the station flew in like little sparklets, looking like tiny snowflakes on a frosty day. Space, like a giant vacuum cleaner, began to suck everything out. Flying out together with the dust were some little washers and nuts that dad got stuck somewhere; a pencil flew by.
My first impression when I opened the hatch was of a huge Earth and of the sense of unreality concerning everything that was going on. Space is very beautiful. There was the dark velvet of the sky, the blue halo of the Earth and fast-moving lakes, rivers, fields and clouds clusters. It was dead silence all around, nothing whatever to indicate the velocity of the flight . . . no wind whistling in your ears, no pressure on you. The panorama was very serene and majestic.

— Valentin Lebedev, describing his spacewalk of 30 July 1982.

Space flights are merely an escape, a fleeing away from oneself, because it is easier to go to Mars or to the Moon that it is to penetrate one's own being.

— Carl Gustav Jung, quoted in Miguel Serrano's 'The Farewell.'

The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth his handywork.

— Psalms 19:1

Is not God in the height of heaven? and behold the height of the stars, how high they are!

— Job 22:12

The beauty of heaven, the glory of the stars, an ornament giving light in the highest places of the Lord.

— Sirach 43:9

I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.

— Christa McAuliffe, teacher, from her winning essay in NASA’s nationwide search for the first teacher to travel in space, released after her death with six others aboard the space shuttle Challenger.

Suddenly I saw a meteor go by underneath me. A moment later I found myself think, that can’t be a meteor. Meteors burn up in the atmosphere above us; this was below us. Then, of course, the realization hit me.

— Jeffrey Hoffman.

But since time slows down aboard the starship, according to Einstein's special theory of relativity, the crew could reach the Pleiades star-cluster (M45), which is 400 light-years away, in as little as eleven years, by the clocks aboard the starship. After 25 shipboard years, such a ship could even reach the Great Andromeda Galaxy - although over 2 million years would have passed on the earth.
Wormholes were first introduced to the public over a century ago in a book written by an Oxford mathematician. Perhaps realizing that adults might frown on the idea of multiply connected spaces, he wrote the book under a pseudonym and wrote it for children. His name was Charles Dodgson, his pseudonym was Lewis Carroll, and the book was Through The Looking Glass.

— Michio Kaku, 'Visions - How science will revolutionize the 21st century,' 1997

If there were beings who had always lived beneath the earth, in comfortable, well-lit dwellings, decorated with statues and pictures and furnished with all the luxuries enjoyed by persons thought to be supremely happy, and who though they had never come forth above the ground had learnt by report and by hearsay of the existence of certain deities and divine powers; and then if at some time the jaws of the earth were opened and they were able to escape from their hidden abode and to come forth into the regions which we inhabit; when they suddenly had sight of the earth and the seas and the sky, and came to know of the vast clouds and mighty winds, and beheld the sun, and realized not only its size and beauty but also its potency in causing the day by shedding light all over the sky, and, after night had darkened the earth, they then saw the whole sky spangled with stars, and the changing phases of the moon's light, now waxing and now waning, and the risings and settings of all these heavenly bodies and their courses fixed and changeless throughout all eternity, — when they saw these things, surely they would think that the gods exist and that these mighty marvels are their handiwork.

— Cicero

The human space program has existed in the collective unconscious of humanity since the dawn of awareness.

— Frank White, 'The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution,' 1987.

Whoever it was who searched the heavens with a telescope and found no God would not have found the human mind if he had searched the brain with a microscope.

— George Santayana

The mass gross absence of sound in space is more than just silence.

— Eugene Cernan

You almost wish you could turn off the COMM and just appreciate the deafening quiet.

— Russell Schweickart

What the space program needs is more English majors.

— Michael Collins

It's not quite as exhilarating a feeling as orbiting the earth, but it's close. In addition, it has an exotic, bizarre quality due entirely to the nature of the surface below. The earth from orbit is a delight - offering visual variety and an emotional feeling of belonging "down there." Not so with this withered, sun-seared peach pit out of my window. There is no comfort to it; it is too stark and barren; its invitation is monotonous and meant for geologists only.

— Michael Collins, 'Carrying the Fire.'

To set foot on the soil of the asteroids, to lift by hand a rock from the Moon, to observe Mars from a distance of several tens of kilometers, to land on its satellite or even on its surface, what can be more fantastic? From the moment of using rocket devices a new great era will begin in astronomy: the epoch of the more intensive study of the firmament.

— Konstantin E. Tsiolkovsky, Father of Russian Astronautics, 1896.

The greatest gain from space travel consists in the extension of our knowledge. In a hundred years this newly won knowledge will pay huge and unexpected dividends.

— Wernher von Braun.

The sun, the moon and the stars would have disappeared long ago ... had they happened to be within the reach of predatory human hands.

— Havelock Ellis, 'The Dance of Life,' 1923.

We believe that when men reach beyond this planet, they should leave their national differences behind them.

— John F. Kennedy, news conference, 21 February 1962

During the period of the Saturn-Apollo missions we were pilgrims in space, ranging from home in search of knowledge. Now we will become shepherds tending our technological flocks, but like the shepherds of old, we will keep our eyes fixed on the heavens.

— President Jimmy Carter, 1978.

To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit.

— Stephen Hawking

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

No pessimist ever discovered the secret of the stars, or sailed to an uncharted land, or opened a new doorway for the human spirit.

— Helen Keller

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, 'Time Enough For Love,'

We had the sky up there, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss whether they was made or just happened.

— Mark Twain

Every generation has the obligation to free men's minds for a look at new worlds . . .  to look out from a higher plateau than the last generation.

—  Ellison S. Onizuka, born in Kealakekua, Kona, was Hawaii's first astronaut and the first Asian American in space.

I'm hungry. I want to eat something delicious, have a beer and a cigarette. I've come back to Earth full of desires. The air tastes good.

— Toyohiro Akiyama, first Japanese citizen in space, a TV journalist, first words after an unhappy eight days onboard Soyuz TM-11. 10 December 1990

The sun truly 'comes up like thunder,' and it sets just as fast. Each sunrise and sunset lasts only a few seconds. But in that time you see at least eight different bands of color come and go, from a brilliant red to the brightest and deepest blue. And you see sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets every day you're in space. No sunrise or sunset is ever the same.

— Joseph Allen

Suddenly, from behind the rim of the Moon, in long, slow-motion moments of immense majesty, there emerges a sparkling blue and white jewel, a light, delicate sky-blue sphere laced with slowly swirling veils of white, rising gradually like a small pearl in a thick sea
of black mystery. It takes more than a moment to fully realize this is Earth . . . home.

— Edgar Mitchell

A sense of the unknown has always lured mankind and the greatest of the unknowns of today is outer space. The terrors, the joys and the sense of accomplishment are epitomized in the space program.

— William Shatner, who played Captain Kirk in the original 'Star Trek.'

Why our space program? Why, indeed, did we trouble to look past the next mountain? Our prime obligation to ourselves is to make the unknown known. We are on a journey to keep an appointment with whatever we are.

— Gene Roddenberry

The inspirational value of the space program is probably of far greater importance to education than any input of dollars....A whole generation is growing up which has been attracted to the hard disciplines of science and engineering by the romance of space.

— Arthur C. Clarke, 'First on the Moon,' 1970.

Human interest in exploring the heavens goes back centuries. This is what human nature is all about.

— Dennis Tito, 'Newsweek,' 6 October 2003.

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, STS-114 commander, a few days before the re-launch of the Space Shuttle program, reported on Space.com, 11 July 2005.

Of all investments into the future, the conquest of space demands the greatest efforts and the longest-term commitment . . . but it also offers the greatest reward: none less than a universe.

— Daniel Christlein

Unknowingly, we plow the dust of stars, blown about us by the wind, and drink the universe in a glass of rain.

—  Ihab Hassan

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, 'Jupiter’s Travels.'

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

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

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.

— President John F. Kennedy

Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretch'd in never-ending line
Along the margin of a bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.

— William Wordsworth, 'I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud' (also known as 'The Daffodils'), 1804.

There are celestial sights more dazzling, spectacles that inspire more awe, but to the thoughtful observer who is privileged to see them well, there is nothing in the sky so profoundly impressive as these canals of Mars. Fine lines and little gossamer filaments only, cobwebbing the face of the Martian disk, but threads to draw one's mind after them across the millions of miles of intervening void.

— Percival Lowell, 1908.

Until they come to see us from their planet, I wait patiently. I hear them saying: Don't call us, we'll call you.

— Marlene Dietrich

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

— E. B. White

We're all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars.

— Oscar Wilde

Outer space is no place for a person of breeding.

— Lady Violet Bonham Carter

It's time for the human race to enter the solar system.

— Vice President of the U.S. Dan Quayle

Space-ships and time machines are no escape from the human condition. Let Othello subject Desdemona to a lie-detector test; his jealousy will still blind him to the evidence. Let Oedipus triumph over gravity; he won't triumph over his fate.

— Arthur Koestler

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.

I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

— Burt Rutan, 'Time' 5 March 2007.

It is humanities destiny to explore the universe. When we start thinking and working on that cosmic level, we will transcend our parochial differences and tribal natures and become global creatures, solar system creatures. Then we will figure out where we fit in.

— Story Musgrove

Once you get to earth orbit, you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system.

— Robert A. Heinlein

We used to joke about canned men, putting people in a can and seeing how far you can send them and bring them back. That's not the purpose of this program... Space is a laboratory, and we go into it to work and learn the new.

— John Glenn Jr.

To get your name well enough known that you can run for a public office, some people do it by being great lawyers or philanthropists or business people or work their way up the political ladder. I happened to become known from a different route.

— John Glenn Jr.

I didn't care if I was first, 50th, or 500th in space. I just wanted to go.

— Dennis Tito, first space tourist, during Mir training over a year prior to launch, quoted in USA Today 20 June 2000.

We are very happy to accompany you to space. We like your mathematical mind. And we more like your romantic soul.

— Yuri Baturin, cosmonaut flight engineer, regards Dennis Tito, 'Newsweek,' April 2001.

You are not a baby. I am not a babysitter. I am commander. You are 'first cosmonaut tourist,' an 'engineer in education.' It is very important for mankind.

— Talgat Musabayev, cosmonaut commander, regards Dennis Tito, Newsweek,' April 2001.

The experience was more fulfilling than I could have ever imagined. I have a newfound sense of wonder seeing the Earth and stars from such an incredible perspective. Certainly, through my training I was prepared for the technical aspects, but I had no idea that I would be flooded with such amazement and joy after seeing my first sunrise and sunset from space.

— Greg Olsen, space tourist, a technology entrepreneur who paid $20 million to spend 10 days at the International Space Station, on landing, 10 October 2005.

I would spend hours and hours gazing at the stars and wondering, what's out there? Sometimes I wondered if . . .  maybe there was another girl like me on another planet some place gazing at the stars and thinking about the same things.

— Anousheh Ansari, preparing to be the first female space tourist and first Iranian in space. A few weeks before launch, 1 September 2006.

The next time I go into space, I'll be able to take my family with me.

— Kathryn Thornton, former NASA astronaut regards space tourism. 2006.

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

— Shannon Lucid, recounting what the two Russian cosmonauts told her every time they left the Mir space station for a spacewalk, 1996.

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

— Shannon Lucid, after 6 months on Space Station Mir, 1996.

It's 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 Shepherd

You're out of your mind!" I told myself, hanging onto a ship in space, and getting ready to admire a sunrise.

— Valeri Ryumin

Suddenly I saw a meteor go by underneath me.

— Jeff Hoffman

I raised the visor on my helmet cover and looked out to try to identify constellations. As I looked out into space, I was overwhelmed by the darkness. I felt the flesh crawl on my back and the hair rise on my neck.

— William Pogue

It's just a bunch of junk up there.

— Harry Monroe, 1986.

One test result is worth one thousand expert opinions

— Wernher von Braun

A human being is the best computer available to place in a spacecraft. . . It is also the only one that can be mass produced with unskilled labor.

— Werner von Braun

Our two greatest problems are gravity and paper work. We can lick gravity, but sometimes the paperwork is overwhelming.

— Werner von Braun

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away, if your car could go straight upwards.

— Sir Fred Hoyle, 'Observer' newspaper, London, 9 September, 1979.

I think it's going to be great if people can buy a ticket to fly up and see black sky and the stars. I'd like to do it myself—but probably after it has flown a serious number of times first!

—Paul Allen, cofounder of Microsoft regards commercial space rides, 'Discover' magazine April 2007.

Man is the animal that intends to shoot himself out into interplanetary space, after having given up on the problem of an efficient way to get himself five miles or so to work and back each day.

— Bill Vaughan, quoted in 'Reader's Digest,' January 1956.

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, 'Timaeus,' c.360 BC

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

Space is the stature of God.

— Joseph Joubert, French essayist, moralist. Pens_es, no. 183,  1842

Two things inspire me to awe—the starry heavens above and the moral universe within.

— Albert Einstein

It's one of the great delights and memories for me . . . I felt like I was seeing, woven together, the power and scale of the entire world.

— Kathy Sullivan, first U.S. woman to walk in space.

Space is for everybody. It's not just for a few people in science or math, or for a select group of astronauts. That's our new frontier out there, and it's everybody's business to know about space.

— Christa McAuliffe, December 6, 1985

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

— Kalpana Chawla

It’s beyond imagination until you actually get up and see it and experience it and feel it.

— Willie McCool

It was a texture. The blackness was so intense.

— Charles Duke

The purpose of life is the investigation of the Sun, the Moon, and the heavens.

— Anaxagoras, 459 BC.

Come quickly, I am tasting stars!

— Dom Perignon, reportedly at the moment of his discovery of champagne, c. 1700, however the quote is first seen in a print advertisement in the late 1800s.

I have a strong feeling about interesting people in space exploration. . . . And the only way it's going to happen is to have some kid fantasize about getting his ray gun, jumping into his spaceship, and flying into outer space.

— George Lucas, creator of Star Wars

First, inevitably, the idea, the fantasy, the fairy tale. Then, scientific calculation. Ultimately, fulfillment crowns the dream.

— Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, 1926.

The regret on our side is, they used to say years ago, we are reading about you in science class. Now they say, we are reading about you in history class.

— Neil Armstrong, July 1999.

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.

— Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr., 'From the Moon to the Millennium,' 1999.

People want a space program that goes somewhere and does something.

— NASA administrator Michael Griffin, reported on CNN.com, 11 July 2005.

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, 'Pale Blue Dot,'

We have lingered long enough on the shores of the cosmic ocean. We are ready at last to set sail for the stars.

— Carl Sagan. 'Cosmos,' 1980.

For forty-nine months between 1968 and 1972 two dozen Americans had the great good fortune to briefly visit the Moon. Half of us became the first emissaries from Earth to tread its dusty surface. We who did so were privileged to represent the hopes and dreams of all humanity. For mankind it was a giant leap for a species that evolved from the stone age to create sophisticated rockets and spacecraft that made a Moon landing possible. For one crowning moment, we were creatures of the cosmic ocean, an epoch that a thousand years hence may be seen as the signature of our century.

— Edwin 'Buzz' Aldrin Jr.

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

Earth bound history has ended. Universal history has begun.

— Earl Hubbard

We are star-stuff.

— Carl Sagan

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

— Arthur C. Clarke

As the skies appear to a man, so is his mind. Some see only clouds there; some, prodigies and portents; some rarely look up at all; their heads, like the brutes,' are directed toward Earth. Some behold there serenity, purity, beauty ineffable. The world runs to see the panorama, when there is a panorama in the sky which few go to see.

— Henry David Thoreau, journal entry, 17 January 1852.