Great Throughts Treasury

"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."

"It will be expensive, it will take a lot of energy and a complex spacecraft. But I suspect that even though the various questions are difficult and many, they are not as difficult and many as those we faced when we started the Apollo (space program) in 1961."

"It's a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on earth. It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it."

"It's an interesting place to be. I recommend it."

"It would be impossible to overstate the appreciation that we on the crew feel for your dedication and the quality of your work."

"Knowledge is fundamental to all human achievements and progress. It is both the key and the quest that advances mankind. The search for knowledge is what brought men to the moon; but it took knowledge already acquired to make it possible to get there. How we use the knowledge we gain determines our progress on earth, in space or on the moon. Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well."

"Later Apollo flights were able to do more and move further in order to cover larger areas, particularly when the Lunar Rover vehicle became available in 1971."

"One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

"Lunar exploration was a great deal of fun and an enormous amount of very hard work, which proves, I hope, that hard work can also be fun. ? From an interview with ThinkQuest.org"

"Our autopilot was taking us into a verge large crater, about the size of a big football stadium with steep slopes on the crater covered with very large rocks about the size of automobiles that was not the kind of place that I wanted to try to make the first landing."

"NASA has been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve. It's sad that we are turning the programme in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation and stimulation it provides to young people."

"NIXON: Hello, Neil and Buzz. I'm talking to you by telephone from the Oval Room at the White House, and this certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made from the White House. I just can't tell you how proud we all are of what you have done. For every American, this has to be the proudest day of our lives. And for people all over the world, I am sure they, too, join with Americans in recognizing what an immense feat this is. Because of what you have done, the heavens have become a part of man's world. And as you talk to us from the Sea of Tranquility, it inspires us to redouble our efforts to bring peace and tranquility to Earth. For one priceless moment in the whole history of man, all the people on this Earth are truly one; one in their pride in what you have done, and one in our prayers that you will return safely to Earth. ARMSTRONG: Thank you, Mr. President. It's a great honor and privilege for us to be here representing not only the United States but men of peace of all nations, and with interests and the curiosity and with the vision for the future. It's an honor for us to be able to participate here today. NIXON: And thank you very much and I look forward ? all of us look forward to seeing you on the Hornet on Thursday. ALDRIN: I look forward to that very much, sir."

"Pilots take no special joy in walking: pilots like flying. Pilots generally take pride in a good landing, not in getting out of the vehicle."

"People love conspiracy theories."

"Preflight planners wanted us to stay in TV range so that they could learn from our results how they could best plan for future missions. I candidly admit that I knowingly and deliberately left the planned working area out of TV coverage to examine and photograph the interior crater walls for possible bedrock exposure or other useful information."

"Research is creating new knowledge."

"Science fiction writers thought it would be possible. H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and other authors found ways to get people to the moon. But none of those writers foresaw any possibility of the lunar explorers being able to communicate with Earth, transmit data, position information, or transmit moving pictures of what they saw back to Earth."

"Science has not yet mastered prophecy. We predict too much for the next year and yet far too little for the next 10."

"Space has not changed but technology has, in many cases, improved dramatically. A good example is digital technology where today's cell phones are far more powerful than the computers on the Apollo Command Module and Lunar Module that we used to navigate to the moon and operate all the spacecraft control systems."

"That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind. 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."

"Start at the end and work back."

"Shoot for the stars but if you happen to miss shoot for the moon instead."

"Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am in the position of a pilot without his checklist, so I?ll have to wing it a bit. ? [Prior to the Apollo missions,] no one knew what kind of person could be persuaded to take the trip. Prisoners were suggested. Soldiers could be ordered. Photographers could take pictures ? and they?re expendable. Doctors understood the limits of human physiology. Finally, both sides picked pilots."

"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind."

"The authors foresaw my part of the adventure, but your part was beyond their comprehension."

"That?s one small step for a man. I paused, and for a split second, I thought about how many people had worked their entire lives to make this possible. Moreover, how lucky I was to be here. One giant leap for mankind."

"The Eagle has landed."

"The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on Earth."

"The exciting part for me, as a pilot, was the landing on the moon. That was the time that we had achieved the national goal of putting Americans on the moon. The landing approach was, by far, the most difficult and challenging part of the flight. Walking on the lunar surface was very interesting, but it was something we looked on as reasonably safe and predictable. So the feeling of elation accompanied the landing rather than the walking."

"The one thing I regret was that my work required an enormous amount of my time, and a lot of travel."

"The single observation I would offer for your consideration is that some things are beyond your control. You can lose your health to illness or accident. You can lose your wealth to all manner of unpredictable sources. What are not easily stolen from you without your cooperation are your principles and your values. They are your most important possessions and, if carefully selected and nurtured, will well serve you and your fellow man."

"These pilots were not involved in such exploration for adventure or to enjoy the view... They rocketed to these extreme altitudes to conduct research to learn about and advance the world of flight."

"There was great uncertainty about how well we would be able to walk in our cumbersome pressurized suit."

"Through books you will meet poets and novelists whose creations will fire your imagination. You will meet the great thinkers who will share with you their philosophies, their concepts of the world, of humanity and of creation. You will learn about events that have shaped our history, of deeds both noble and ignoble. All of this knowledge is yours for the taking? Your library is a storehouse for mind and spirit. Use it well. ? From a letter to the children of Troy, Mich. (via Mental Floss)"

"We only had a few minutes to ourselves. I sauntered around for a while, and then looked up at that eternal sky. I saw that familiar, bright, beautiful planet, Earth. That?s when I comprehended how far away from home I really was. Then it hit me. I was truly on the moon. My life?s dream, fulfilled. I am on the moon."

"We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected."

"We would have loved the opportunity to take some time to enjoy it, but we had the inevitable checklist and experiments that had to go on. So it was back to business, back to work as soon as we congratulated each other."

"We tried to be as focused as we could, work on the things we could do something about, and not worry about the things that were beyond our ability to change."

"We were involved in doing what many thought to be impossible, putting humans on Earth?s moon."

"Yeah, I wasn't chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn't planned by anyone."

"We were operating in a near perfect vacuum with the temperature well above 200 degrees Fahrenheit with the local gravity only one sixth that of Earth."

"You?ve got to expect some of these things are going to go wrong, and we always need to prepare ourselves for handling the unexpected. And you just hope those unexpected things aren?t something that you can?t cope with."

"Well, I think we tried very hard not to be overconfident, because when you get overconfident, that's when something snaps up and bites you."

"Without the skill and experience that actual spacecraft operation provides, the US is far too likely to be on a long downhill slide to mediocrity."