Great Throughts Treasury

"Man must understand his universe in order to understand his destiny. Mystery, however, is a very necessary ingredient in our lives. Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis for man’s desire to understand. Who knows what mysteries will be solved in our lifetime, and what new riddles will become the challenge of the new generations? Science has not mastered prophesy. We predict too much for next year yet far too little for the next ten. Responding to challenge is one of democracy’s great strengths. Our successes in space lead us to hope that this strength can be used in the next decade in the solution of many of our planet’s problems."

"Mystery creates wonder and wonder is the basis of man's desire to understand."

"I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine."

"This is one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

"The important achievement of Apollo was demonstrating that humanity is not forever chained to this planet and our visions go rather further than that and our opportunities are unlimited."

"There can be no great accomplishment without risk."

"I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream."

"A century hence, 2000 may be viewed as quite a primitive period in human history. It?s something to hope for. ... I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer -- born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in the steam tables, in love with free-bodydiagrams, transformed by Laplace, and propelled by compressible flow. As an engineer, I take a substantial amount of pride in the accomplishments of my profession."

"All the Apollo people were working hard, working long hours, and were dedicated to making certain everything they did, they were doing to the very best of their ability."

"All in all, for someone who was immersed in, fascinated by, and dedicated to flight, I was disappointed by the wrinkle in history that had brought me along one generation late. I had missed all the great times and adventures in flight."

"America must decide if it wishes to remain a leader in space. If it does, we should institute a program which will give us the very best chance of achieving that goal."

"A picture does a great job, but it?s not nearly like being there."

"Americans have visited and examined 6 locations on Luna, varying in size from a suburban lot to a small township. That leaves more than 14 million square miles yet to explore."

"As a boy, because I was born and raised in Ohio, about 60 miles north of Dayton, the legends of the Wrights have been in my memories as long as I can remember,"

"At the time I think the reality was, you?ve got your job to do and you just go ahead and do it, and keep doing it and hope for the best."

"At the edges [of knowledge] it's always going to be a challenge."

"Because normal air conditioning is inadequate for lunar conditions, we were required to use cold water to cool the interior of our suits. We did not have any data to tell us how long the small water tank in our backpacks would suffice."

"During my testimony (to the House Science and Technology Committee) in May I said, ?Some question why Americans should return to the Moon. ?After all,? they say ?we have already been there.? I find that mystifying. It would be as if 16th century monarchs proclaimed that ?we need not go to the New World, we have already been there.? Or as if President Thomas Jefferson announced in 1803 that Americans ?need not go west of the Mississippi, the Lewis and Clark Expedition has already been there.?"

"For the United States, the leading space faring nation for nearly half a century, to be without carriage to low Earth orbit and with no human exploration capability to go beyond Earth orbit for an indeterminate time into the future, destines our nation to become one of second or even third rate stature. While the president?s plan envisages humans travelling away from Earth and perhaps toward Mars at some time in the future, the lack of developed rockets and spacecraft will assure that ability will not be available for many years."

"Each book holds an experience and an adventure."

"Despite being competitors, the Wrights held great respect for Langley."

"Between 7am and 8.30am on Tuesday 8 March, all of our broadband customers lost internet connectivity as a result of planned maintenance on our network over-running from its intended 4am to 6am window."

"Geologists have a saying - rocks remember."

"Friends and colleagues all of a sudden looked at us, treated us, slightly differently than had months or years before when we were working together. I never quite understood that."

"Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon. July 1969 AD. We came in peace for all mankind."

"Gliders, sail planes, they're wonderful flying machines. It's the closest you can come to being a bird."

"Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed."

"I can honestly say - and it's a big surprise to me - that I have never had a dream about being on the moon."

"I believe that the Good Lord gave us a finite number of heartbeats and I'm damned if I'm going to use up mine running up and down a street."

"I am, and ever will be, a white-socks, pocket-protector, nerdy engineer, born under the second law of thermodynamics, steeped in steam tables, in love with free-body diagrams, transformed by Laplace and propelled by compressible flow."

"I am comfortable with my level of public discourse."

"I guess that's the story of flight in the 20th century: from the beginning, the very first flights at Kitty Hawk to the various, very furthest and fastest flights that man has ever made,"

"I never thought that I, Neil Alden Armstrong, was every going to set foot on the moon. Sure I definitely wanted to, but I never thought than I would be here in the Lunar Module, Eagle, ready to do so."

"I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did."

"I guess we all like to be recognized not for one piece of fireworks, but for the ledger of our daily work."

"I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth."

"I hope you become comfortable with the use of logic without being deceived into concluding that logic will inevitably lead you to the correct conclusion."

"I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium."

"I think if there was anything I learned from our skipper was that it?s not how you look; it?s how you perform."

"I was delighted to be in that project ... but I don't think about it on a day-to-day basis -- probably only when you guys (in the media) remind me."

"I was the strange creature that kidnapped Bock from his homeland and brought him to this strange new and still changing planet. I can't help feeling that I owe him an apology or at least an explanation."

"I thought, well, when I step off it's just going to be a little step?a step from there down to there?but then I thought about all those 400,000 people who had given me the opportunity to make that step and thought it's going to be a big something for all those folks and, indeed for a lot of others that weren't even involved in the project, so it was kind of a simple correlation."

"I?m quite certain that we?ll have such [lunar] bases in our lifetime, somewhat like the Antarctic stations and similar scientific outposts, continually manned."

"I?ll not assert that it was a diversion which prevented a war, but nevertheless, it was a diversion."

"I would hope that history would grant me leeway for dropping the syllable and understand that it was certainly intended, even if it wasn't said?although it might actually have been, he said in the 2005 biography First Man."

"I was elated, ecstatic and extremely surprised that we were successful,"

"If that's there, I believe that technology will probably step up to their part of it."

"If there are any going, I will certainly be looking to take them."

"In much of society, research means to investigate something you do not know or understand."

"I'm substantially concerned about the policy directions of the space agency. We have a situation in the U.S. where the White House and Congress are at odds over what the future direction should be. They're sort of playing a game and NASA is the shuttlecock that they're hitting back and forth."