We go into space because whatever mankind must undertake, free men must fully share.
The space program is not only scientific in purpose but also is an expression of man's insistent determination to do the nearly impossible - to explore the unknown, even at great risk.
There is nothing in the world common to man, that man cannot do.
Finds progress, man's distinctive mark alone, Not God's, and not the beast's; God is, they are, Man partly is, and wholly hopes to be.
The most important human endeavor is the striving for morality in our actions. Our inner balance and even our very existence depend on it. Only morality in our actions can give beauty and dignity to life. To make this a living force and bring it to clear consciousness is perhaps the foremost task of education. The foundation of morality should not be made dependent on myth nor tied to any authority lest doubt about the myth or about the legitimacy of the authority imperil the foundation of sound judgment and action.
After all, crime is only a left-handed form of human endeavor.
When I was a kid, it never occurred to me that human beings wrote books. It was a kind of cognitive dissonance for me... I just didn't think it was something that people did.
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.
Every human endeavor has leaders and followers, and your job as a leader is to inspire.
We live in a country that sent people to the moon. This accomplishment, along with other bold leaps of faith, required political will, determination and imagination. Providing health care for all of our citizens requires the same force of will.
The Discovery was the most intricate, complex machine man has ever built. It's a testament to our time.
The story of civilization is, in a sense, the story of engineering - that long and arduous struggle to make the forces of nature work for man's good.
God makes trees, he doesn't write books.
Well, any time you do anything good, it's man versus himself, right? That's the art, the challenge.
People overcoming the odds is actually a really important part of humanity, and I don't think we kind of get to celebrate that as much as we should.
This desert town was man's own miracle of pure purposelessness.
I have looked farther into space than ever a human being did before me.
Germany is the new Sparta. The same spirit of national discipline and self-sacrifice which earned for a few thousand inhabitants of a small Greek city-state an enduring place in history is being reproduced here by 67,000,000 of what are in some ways the most intelligent, industrious and high-spirited, and hardy people in the world. The last two years have witnessed here a political process as profound and far-reaching in its effects as the French Revolution. Germany has set a new pace of human endeavor. She has acquired a national momentum without precedent in political dynamics.
The only progress which is really effective depends, not upon the bounty of nature, but upon the energy of man.
Science is not something that exists apart from human beings. It's one of the things we do as human beings, and we always have done science and technology in some form.
The world is like a vast sea: mankind like a vessel sailing on its tempestuous bosom. ... [T]he sciences serve us for oars.
Nothing is difficult to mortals; we strive to reach heaven itself in our folly. [Lat., Nil mortalibus arduum est; Coelum ipsum petimus stultitia.]
No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man's front embraces the whole universe.
Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.
One has children in the expectation of dying before them. In fact, you want to make damn sure you die before them, just as you plant a tree or build a house knowing, hoping that it will outlive you. That's how the human species has done as well as it has.
