50 Inspiring Space Quotes That Ignite Your Cosmic Imagination

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

- Neil Armstrong

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

- Neil Armstrong

"Those who came before us made certain that this country rode the first waves of the industrial revolutions, 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 a part of it–we mean to lead it. For the eyes of the world now look into space, to the moon and to the planets beyond, and we have vowed that we shall not see it governed by a hostile flag of conquest, but by a banner of freedom and peace. We have vowed that we shall not see space filled with weapons of mass destruction, but with instruments of knowledge and understanding. Space travel is life."

- John F. Kennedy

"Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people."

- Carl Sagan

"What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous."

- Thomas Merton

"What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?"

- Henry David Thoreau

"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."

- Neil Armstrong

"One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us."

- Michio Kaku

"We are not going to be able to operate our Spaceship Earth successfully nor for much longer unless we see it as a whole spaceship and our fate as common. It has to be everybody or nobody."

- R. Buckminster Fuller

"The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet."

- Chris Hadfield

"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

"We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe. That makes us something very special."

- Stephen Hawking

"The view of Earth is absolutely spectacular, and the feeling of looking back and seeing your planet as a planet is just an amazing feeling. It’s a totally different perspective, and it makes you appreciate, actually, how fragile our existence is."

- Sally Ride

"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

"When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried."

- Alan Shepard

"We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space."

- Buzz Aldrin

"It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."

- Carl Sagan

"Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space."

- Buzz Aldrin

"The universe is a pretty big place. If it’s just us, seems like an awful waste of space."

- Carl Sagan

"Space exploration is a force of nature unto itself that no other force in society can rival."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"Your vision is not limited by what your eye can see, but by what your mind can imagine."

- Ellison Onizuka

"There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew."

- Marshall McLuhan

"Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space."

- Douglas Adams

"Don’t let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It’s your place in the world; it’s your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live."

- Mae Jemison

"Space is an inspirational concept that allows you to dream big."

- Peter Diamandis

"The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever."

- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

"One truth I have discovered for sure: When you believe that all things are possible and you are willing to work hard to accomplish your goals, you can achieve the next ‘impossible’ dream. No dream is too high!"

- Buzz Aldrin

"Mankind is drawn to the heavens for the same reason we were once drawn into unknown lands and across the open sea. We choose to explore space because doing so improves our lives and lifts our national spirit. Let us continue the journey."

- George W. Bush

"Space travel is life-enhancing, and anything that’s life-enhancing is worth doing. It makes you want to live forever."

- Ray Bradbury

"I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

- Neil Armstrong

"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

"In science fiction, we dream. In order to colonize in space, to rebuild our cities, which are so far out of whack, to tackle any number of problems, we must imagine the future, including the new technologies that are required."

- Ray Bradbury

"I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on a single planet. But I’m an optimist. We will reach out to the stars."

- Stephen Hawking

"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

"The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time."

- John F. Kennedy

"We cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets and set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish."

- Arthur C. Clarke

"HERE MEN FROM THE PLANET EARTH FIRST SET FOOT UPON THE MOON JULY 1969, A.D. WE CAME IN PEACE FOR ALL MANKIND"

- Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong

"Earth is the cradle of humanity, but one cannot live in a cradle forever."

- Konstantin Tsiolkovsky

"The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join in it or not, and it is one of the great adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in the race for space."

- John F. Kennedy

"Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another."

- Carl Sagan

"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

"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

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

- Stephen Hawking

"It’s a fixer-upper of a planet but we could make it work."

- Elon Musk

"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

"Of course risk is part of spaceflight. We accept some of that to achieve greater goals in exploration and find out more about ourselves and the universe."

- Lisa Nowak

"The universe seems neither benign nor hostile, merely indifferent."

- Carl Sagan

"Earth is a small town with many neighborhoods in a very big universe."

- Ron Garan

"The universe is not required to be in perfect harmony with human ambition."

- Carl Sagan

"Cosmology does, I think, affect the way that we perceive humanity’s role in nature. One thing we’ve learnt from astronomy is that the future lying ahead is more prolonged than the past. Even our sun is less than halfway through its life."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"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

"I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration."

- Elon Musk

"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

"At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space."

- Natalie Wood

"Why should man's first flight to the moon be a matter of national competition? Why should the United States and the Soviet Union, in preparing for such expeditions, become involved in immense duplications of research, construction and expenditure?"

- John F. Kennedy

"We are infinite beings with infinite possibilities."

- Bernard A. Harris Jr.

"Each of us all have that sense of exploration and a desire to continue to push the limits of what humans are capable of. And I think that is something that unites us."

- Jessica Watkins

"As we leave the Moon… we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind."

- Gene Cernan

"I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet."

- Jack London

"The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos."

- Tom Hanks

"Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?"

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact."

- Elon Musk

"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition."

- Rod Serling

"Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other."

- Sojourner Truth

"You should find something you’re really passionate about and love. Because you’ll do your best at things your passionate about."

- Jan Davis

"When you're getting ready to launch into space, you're sitting on a big explosion waiting to happen."

- Sally Ride

"The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to."

- Carl Sandburg

"The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me."

- Blaise Pascal

"When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere."

- Robert A. Heinlein

"The black holes of nature are the most perfect macroscopic objects there are in the universe: the only elements in their construction are our concepts of space and time."

- Subrahmanyan Chandrasekhar

"Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!"

- Lord Byron

"The moon and other celestial bodies should be free for exploration and use by all countries. No country should be permitted to advance a claim of sovereignty."

- Lyndon B. Johnson

"It takes a planet to explore the universe."

- Dylan Taylor

"Space is to place as eternity is to time."

- Joseph Joubert

"Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom."

- Nikola Tesla

"The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller."

- John Milton

"For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions."

- Zhuangzi

"If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization."

- Bill Nye

"What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space."

- Erwin Schrodinger

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

- Fred Hoyle

"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

"I’m sure the universe is full of intelligent life. It’s just been too intelligent to come here."

- Arthur C. Clarke

"I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets."

- John Glenn

"Once you can accept the universe as matter expanding into nothing that is something, wearing stripes with plaid comes easy."

- Albert Einstein

"Contact light."

- Buzz Aldrin

"Looking up into the night sky is looking into infinity-distance is incomprehensible and therefore meaningless."

- Douglas Adams

"Most of what Einstein said and did has no direct impact on what anybody reads in the Bible. Special relativity, his work in quantum mechanics, nobody even knows or cares. Where Einstein really affects the Bible is the fact that general relativity is the organizing principle for the Big Bang."

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

"In the past, it was only in science fiction novels that you could read about ordinary people being able to go to space… But you laid the foundation for space tourism."

- Nursultan Nazarbayev

"I think the universe is pure geometry - basically, a beautiful shape twisting around and dancing over space-time."

- Antony Garrett Lisi

"The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter."

- Sally Ride

"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 Shepard

"In so many and such important ways, then, do the planets bear witness to the earth's mobility."

- Nicolaus Copernicus

"Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars."

- Bette Davis

"Space exploration promised us alien life, lucrative planetary mining, and fabulous lunar colonies. News flash, ladies and gents: Space is nearly empty. It's a sterile vacuum, filled mostly with the junk we put up there."

- Graham Hawkes

"The heart looks into space to be away from earth."

- Richard Jefferies

"I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life."

- B. F. Skinner

"Houston, we've had a problem."

- Jim Lovell

"Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock."

- Anaxagoras

"For NASA, space is still a high priority."

- Dan Quayle

"If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out."

- William Blake

"From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a redacted to keep this site family friendly."

- Edgar Mitchell

"Space or science fiction has become a dialect for our time."

- Doris Lessing

"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

"I’m coming back in and it’s the saddest moment of my life."

- Edward White

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage."

- Mark Russell