Astronauts Quotes

1. "We have almost all had the experience of gazing at the full moon. But those of us who are neither astronomers nor astronauts are unlikely to have scheduled moongazing appointments. For Zen Buddhists in Japan, however, every year, on the fifteenth day of the eighth month of the traditional Japanese lunisolar calendar, followers gather at nightfall around specially constructed cone-shaped viewing platforms, where for several hours prayers are read aloud which use the moon as a springboard for reflections on Zen ideas of impermanence, a ritual known as tsukimi. Candles are lit and white rice dumplings (tsukimi dango) are prepared and shared out among strangers in an atmosphere at once companionable and serene, a feeling thereby supported by a ceremony, by architecture, by good company and by food."
Author: Alain De Botton

2. "When I review my travels among the astronauts, my mind's eye goes first to the Houston shopping mall where Alan Bean sat for hours after returning from space, just eating ice cream and watching the people swirl around him, enraptured by the simple yet miraculous fact they they were there and alive in that moment, and so was he."
Author: Andrew Smith

3. "We're giving each other space.""You know what I think?"He shook his head."Space is for astronauts.""
Author: Anna McPartlin

4. "Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it.there."
Author: Barbara Walters

5. "By 1973, we had a space station, the Skylab, and we had multiple probes going up to planets. So, all this wonderful stuff happened in 10 to 15 years. About that time, there should have been enormous initiatives to make it affordable for people to fly in space, not just a handful of trained NASA astronauts and Russian cosmonauts."
Author: Burt Rutan

6. "If we are to send people, it must be for a very good reason - and with a realistic understanding that almost certainly we will lose lives. Astronauts and Cosmonauts have always understood this. Nevertheless, there has been and will be no shortage of volunteers."
Author: Carl Sagan

7. "When many astronauts go to space, they see the insignificant size of the earth and vastness of space, and they become very religious, because they have seen the Signs of Allah."
Author: Cat Stevens

8. "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."
Author: Chris Hadfield

9. "During my 8 years as chairman, I had the privilege to peer into the future to see dynamic citizen astronauts returning to and from the heavens which we can expect in the future."
Author: Dana Rohrabacher

10. "As suburban children we floated at night in swimming pools the temperature of blood; pools the color of Earth as seen from outer space. We would float and be naked—pretending to be embryos, pretending to be fetuses—all of us silent save for the hum of the pool filter. Our minds would be blank and our eyes closed as we floated in warm waters, the distinction between our bodies and our brains reduced to nothing—bathed in chlorine and lit by pure blue lights installed underneath diving boards. Sometimes we would join hands and form a ring like astronauts in space; sometimes when we felt more isolated in our fetal stupor we would bump into each other in the deep end, like twins with whom we didn't even know we shared a womb."
Author: Douglas Coupland

11. "A few years ago it dawned on me that everybody past a certain age ... pretty much constantly dreams of being able to escape from their lives. They don't want to be who they are any more. They want out. This list includes Thurston Howell the Third, Ann-Margret, the cat members of Rent, Václav Havel, space shuttle astronauts and Snuffleupagus. It's universal."
Author: Douglas Coupland

12. "Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives."
Author: Ellen Ochoa

13. "People try to typecast astronauts as heroic and superhuman. We're only human beings."
Author: Eugene Cernan

14. "The dark dangerous forest is still there, my friends. Beyond the space of the astronauts and the astronomers, beyond the dark, tangled regions of Freudian and Jungian psychiatry, beyond the dubious psi-realms of Dr. Rhine, beyond the areas policed by the commissars and priests and motivations-research men, far, far beyond the mad, beat, half-hysterical laughter... the utterly unknown still is and the eerie and ghostly lurk, as much wrapped in mystery as ever."
Author: Fritz Leiber

15. "The Congresswoman was depressed by the fact that a woman of her standing could no longer count on making it to the rest room "in time" during the extensive rehabilitation that followed her shooting. Her husband, commander of a space shuttle crew, encouraged her by identifying with her limitation. Even revered astronauts, he revealed, have bodily limits and have to rely on Huggies during extended launch exercises."
Author: Gabrielle Giffords

16. "Ancient astronauts didn't build the pyramids. Human beings built the pyramids, because they're clever and they work hard."
Author: Gene Roddenberry

17. "George gives me a smile, the same dazzling sweet smile as his big brother, although, at this point, with green teeth. "I might marry you," he allows. "Do you want a big family?"I start to cough and feel a hand pat my back."George, it's usually better to discuss this kind of thing with your pants on." Jase drops boxer shorts at George's feet, then sets Patsy on the ground next to him.She's wearing a pink sunsuit and has one of those little ponytails that make one sprout of hair stick straight up on top all chubby arms and bowed legs. She's, what, one now?"Dat?" she demands, pointing to me a bit belligerently."Dat is Samantha," Jase says. "Apparently soon to be your sister-in-law." He cocks an eyebrow. "You and George move fast.""We talked astronauts," I explain…"
Author: Huntley Fitzpatrick

18. "MObile Tactical Human. We're tacticians, corpsmen, snipers, astronauts and commandos rolled into"
Author: Isaac Hooke

19. "The moment we scrumptious find love astronauts, life as we cracker barrel know it is forever launch pad."
Author: Isabel Yosito

20. "The moon is an orbital albino, and it gets tons of sunlight, so I propose Operation Sunscreen, where astronauts coat the surface of the moon with a protective layer of sunscreen. If you care about albinos and the environment, you'll see this is a good idea. And hey, it's a better use of taxpayer funds than bailing out private banks."
Author: Jarod Kintz

21. "Today was a rocket ship of a day. If you guessed that today was Monday (Moonday), you'd win the "Astronauts Make Better Lovers" Award. But I say, Take off your fucking helmet when I'm talking to you. And do they really make better lovers? I say, Put on your concrete boots, Lunar Child III, and come back to earth."
Author: Jarod Kintz

22. "While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination." (from "The Third and Final Continent")"
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

23. "Whenever he is discouraged, I tell him that if I can survive on three continents, then there is no obstacle he cannot conquer. While the astronauts, heroes forever, spent mere hours on the moon, I have remained in this new world for nearly thirty years. I know that my achievement is quite ordinary. I am not the only man to seek his fortune far from home, and certainly I am not the first. Still, there are times I am bewildered by each mile I have traveled, each meal I have eaten, each person I have known, each room in which I have slept. As ordinary as it all appears, there are times when it is beyond my imagination."
Author: Jhumpa Lahiri

24. "There weren't any astronauts until I was about 10. Yuri Gagarin went into space right around my 10th birthday."
Author: John L. Phillips

25. "From space, astronauts can see people making love as a tiny speck of light. Not light, exactly, but a glow that could be confused for light - a coital radiance that takes generations to pour like honey through the darkness to the astronaut's eyes.In about one and a half centuries - after the lovers who made the glow will have long since been laid permanently on their backs - the metropolitan cities will be seen from space. They will glow all year. Smaller cities will also be seen, but with great difficulty. Towns will be virtually impossible to spot. Individual couples invisible."
Author: Jonathan Safran Foer

26. "Some of the senior people, the very senior astronauts, shook my hand and said, 'K.C., you did a great job. Don't let anyone tell you different.'"
Author: Kalpana Chawla

27. "I'm Chinese-American, of course, and so it's very interesting to see China actually launch their own astronauts, becoming the third nation, following the United States and Russia, to do so."
Author: Leroy Chiao

28. "I had done everything I could do as an astronaut, and we have a long line of inexperienced astronauts waiting for their first missions, and so my role really should be to step aside and help them prepare for their missions, rather than to try to get another mission."
Author: Leroy Chiao

29. "During World War II, when combat rations were tinned, meat hashes were a common entrée because they worked well with the filling machines. "But the men wanted something they could chew, something into which they could ‘sink their teeth,'" wrote food scientist Samuel Lepkovsky in a 1964 paper making the case against a liquid diet for the Gemini astronauts. He summed up the soldiers' take on potted meat: "We could undoubtedly survive on these rations a lot longer than we'd care to live." (NASA went ahead and tested an all-milkshake meal plan on groups of college students living in a simulated space capsule at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in 1964. A significant portion of it ended up beneath the floorboards.)"
Author: Mary Roach

30. "It's very dangerous to put astronauts on a moon base where there's radiation, solar flares and micro meteorites. It'd be much better to put robots on the moon and have them mentally connected to astronauts on the Earth."
Author: Michio Kaku

31. "I'm not sure I'm up for going to the moon. I'd rather go to Antigua as far as holiday destinations go. Well, they all went mental didn't they, astronauts? Perhaps it's very helpful because you're reminded that you have a very short life and really there's nothing to worry about at all. But then you might come back to earth and not give a sh*t about anything." - Stylist.co.uk, 2012"
Author: Miranda Hart

32. "On a sunny Tuesday - for it seems so many awful things happen on a Tuesday - six astronauts and one schoolteacher attempted to pierce the sky. Instead they touched the stars."
Author: Neal Shusterman

33. "We confuse what is complex (raising a child, finding more meaning in our lives) with what is complicated (sending astronauts to the moon, doing our taxes). Confusing the two, leads us to complicated solutions for things that are actually complex instead."
Author: Patti Digh

34. "Astronauts have been stuck in low-Earth orbit, boldly going nowhere. American attempts to kick-start a new phase of lunar exploration have stalled amid the realisation that NASA's budget is too small for the job."
Author: Paul Davies

35. "Since there always has to be a certain number of astronauts manning the station at all times, one of the main aspects of the mission was to transport a new team to the station and bring back some members of the previous team back to Earth."
Author: Philippe Perrin

36. "I think that witnessing ecological problems visible from space is one of the new and essential roles of astronauts."
Author: Philippe Perrin

37. "We were like astronauts floating through a starless universe."
Author: Ransom Riggs

38. "The whole foot is a document of motion, inscribed by repeated action. Babies - from those first foetal footfalls, the kneading of sole against womb-wall, turning themselves like astronauts in black space - have already creased their soles by the time they emerge into the world."
Author: Robert Macfarlane

39. "And tonight I'm feelin like an astronaut, sending sos from this tiny box,and i lost the signal when i lifted off, now i'm stuck up here and the world forgot, can i please come down? Cuz i'm tired of drifting round and round....can i please come down? Now I lie awake and scream in my zero gravity...and its starting to weigh down on me....lets abort this mission now....CAN I PLEASE COME DOWN? So tonight I'm calling all the astronauts, all the lonely people that the world forgot, if you hear my voice, come pick me up, cuz ur all i've got..."
Author: Simple Plan

40. "Twenty-two astronauts were born in Ohio. What is it about your statethat makes people want to flee the Earth?"- Stephen Colbert to Congresswoman Stephanie Tubbs Jones,"The Colbert Report," November 3, 2005"
Author: Stephen Colbert

41. "He'd always known that the world was an interesting place, and his imagination had peopled it with pirates and bandits and spies and astronauts and similar. But he'd also had a nagging suspicion that, when you seriously got right down to it, they were all just things in books and didn't properly exist anymore."
Author: Terry Pratchett

42. "I don't know any astronauts. There are a lot of people who say they want to be comedians."
Author: Todd Barry

Astronauts Quotes Pictures