Inspirational astronaut quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
Famous Astronaut Quotes
Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage. – Eugene Cernan
When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried. – Alan Shepard
Astronauts are very professional and when they’re preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives. – Ellen Ochoa
There is perhaps no better a demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. – Carl Sagan
Our astronauts, when they go orbiting around the earth, they actually come back slightly younger than a twin that they would have on the planet Earth who was stationary. This is called the twin paradox. – Michio Kaku
The scenery was very beautiful. But I did not see The Great Wall. – Yang Liwei
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. – Cat Stevens
Anyone who sits on top of the largest hydrogen-oxygen fueled system in the world, knowing they’re going to light the bottom, and doesn’t get a little worried, does not fully understand the situation. – John Young
We’re all astronauts, really, aren’t we; interstellar astronauts, travelling so far into the blackness we can never return. – S.K. Tremayne
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. – Neil Armstrong
To become an astronaut is not a question of being the best at something or things coming easy to you, but it’s being a person that can work with others and not give up. And, for me, that was part of it too. – Michael J Massimino
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. – Michio Kaku
It’s a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work. – Elon Musk
Any astronaut can tell you you’ve got to do everything you can to learn about your life support system and then do everything you can to take care of it. – Sylvia Earle
Mars has been flown by, orbited, smacked into, radar examined, and rocketed onto, as well as bounced upon, rolled over, shoveled, drilled into, baked and even blasted. Still to come: Mars being stepped on. – Buzz Aldrin
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
Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here. – John Swigert
Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe. – Ron Garan
At this point, I thought ‘We made it,’ by which I meant ‘We survived.’ I also was acutely aware that my childhood dream of flying into space had just come true. – Ron Garan
The majority of astronauts have to change their eyeglasses while in space. They bring eyeglasses with them and typically change a few months into the mission. – Scott Kelly
In the van, we can see the rocket in the distance, lit up and shining, an obelisk. In reality, of course, it’s a 4.5-megaton bomb loaded with explosive fuel, which is why everyone else is driving away from it. – Chris Hadfield –
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
I find it curious that I never heard any astronaut say that he wanted to go to the Moon so he would be able to look back and see the Earth. We all wanted to see what the Moon looked like close up. Yet, for most of us, the most memorable sight was not of the Moon but of our beautiful blue and white home, moving majestically around the sun, all alone and infinite black space. – Alan Bean
Astronauts are like these mythic legends, but really, they are just regular people, people who wear chinos. – Mary Roach
That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. – Neil Armstrong
Astronauts cannot pick their nicknames and can only get their nicknames from other astronauts. Any astronaut who tries to give himself a cool nickname will regret it by getting just the opposite from his astronaut friends. – Michael J. Massimino
The Earth was small, light blue, and so touchingly alone, our home that must be defended like a holy relic. The Earth was absolutely round. I believe I never knew what the word round meant until I saw Earth from space. – Alexei Leonov
Every single astronaut who has come back from space comes back determined to do more to protect it. – Richard Branson
Weightlessness was wonderful, and I was surprised at how natural it felt. – Ron Garan
The pressure suit helps if something goes wrong during launch or re-entry astronauts have a way to parachute off the shuttle. The suits protect you from loss of pressure in case of emergency. – Sally Ride
The Earth reminded us of a Christmas tree ornament hanging in the blackness of space. As we got farther and farther away it diminished in size. Finally, it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful marble you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. – James Irwin
This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. – Neil Armstrong
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
As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes. – Chris Hadfield
The stars don’t look bigger, but they do look brighter. – Sally Ride
Astronauts were not the impulsive daredevils so dear to the stereopticonloving public. They couldn’t afford to be. The hazards of the profession required an infinite capacity for cautious, contemplative thought. – Eric Frank Russell
What everyone in the astronaut corps shares in common is not gender or ethnic background, but motivation, perseverance, and desire the desire to participate in a voyage of discovery. – Ellen Ochoa
Astronauts are not superhuman. They lead ordinary lives and have varied personalities. – Buzz Aldrin
Although as a boy I had dreamed about going into space, I had completely forgotten about that until one day I received a call from an astronaut, who suggested that I should join the program. – David M. Brown
Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind. – Neil Armstrong
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. – Paul Davies
Astronauts are inherently insane. And really noble. – Andy Weir
I felt an awesome responsibility, and I took the responsibility very seriously, of being a role model and opening another door to black Americans, but the important thing is not that I am black, but that I did a good job as a scientist and an astronaut. There will be black astronauts flying in later missions … and they, too, will be people who excel, not simply who are black … who can ably represent their people, their communities, their country. – Guion S. Bluford Jr.
We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth. – William Anders
So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there’s not very much you can do. – Sally Ride
I think that the two things that almost any astronaut would describe [as most fun about being in space] are the weightlessness and the view of Earth. Weightlessness is just a lot of fun! – Sally Ride
As an astronaut, when you’re getting ready to go out of that hatch, you know that’s the pinnacle of both your career and your life. The view completely blows you away. The real challenge is getting past the excitement and getting focused and down to work. – Thomas Marshburn
The great thing about being an astronaut is you kind of get to do a little bit of everything. I mean, we’re going to ride a rocket uphill. – David M. Brown
Astronauts living on the International Space Station will soon be getting their drinking water from a new system that recycles their urine into drinkable water. Said one Space Station astronaut, ‘It would have been nice to get a heads-up on that before we got here. – Seth Meyers
Some astronauts describe the routine flushing of urine into space, where the freezing temperatures turn the droplets into a cloud of bright, drifting crystals, as being among the most amazing sights they saw on an entire voyage. – Gene Cernan
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
Some astronauts sleep in sort of beds compartments that you can open up and crawl into and then close up, almost like a little bedroom. – Sally Ride
Then there was the challenge to keep doing better and better, to fly the best test flight that anybody had ever flown. That led to my being recognized as one of the more experienced test pilots, and that led to the astronaut business. – Alan Shepard
