The hardest thing for me as an astronaut was to improve my swimming skills.
I've been asked about UFOs and I've said publicly I thought they were somebody else, some other civilization.
Well, for me it really wasn't a case of deciding to be an astronaut.
I thought the attractions of being an astronaut were actually, not so much the Moon, but flying in a completely new medium.
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.
The astronauts who came in with me in my astronaut class - my class had 29 men and 6 women - those men were all very used to working with women.
The psychedelic inner astronaut sees things which no human being has ever seen before, and no other human being will ever see again. But in fact this has no meaning unless it is possible to carry it back into the collectivity.
Every astronaut flew into space for a living. But while NASA has not solved the security problems, I would not put me back into a shuttle - and no other astronaut. The confidence is shaken.
You don't believe that the Earth is round only if you're an astronaut. You don't believe Napoleon existed only if you're a historian. You believe these things because they're facts, proved by evidence.
If there'd been an astronaut on the moon right then, I'm sure I could have seen him. Perhaps he could have looked down and seen me too. . . the only one who could.
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.
Every single astronaut who has come back from space comes back determined to do more to protect it.
Astronauts: space activists.
I am surprised nothing has been made of the fact that astronaut Neil Armstrong carried no sidearms when he landed on the moon.
I want to launch a globe into space just to mess with the astronauts.
Then, much later, my next dream was to become an astronaut, and I was fortunate to realize that dream, also.
I never made a career decision based solely on my desire to be an astronaut. I attended the Naval Academy because I wanted to be a Navy pilot. I majored in math because math had always come pretty easily to me and I liked it.
We must move into the universe. Mankind must save itself. We must escape the danger of war and politics. We must become astronauts and go out into the universe and discover the God in ourselves.
Don't get bogged down by the notion of limits. There aren't any.
I fully expected that, by the end of the century, we would have achieved substantially more than we actually did.
