Malcolm Muggeridge Quotes

Life, not death, is the great mystery you must confront.

What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.

Since we had nothing to do with our arrival and usually are not consulted about our departure, what makes so many of us think we're entitled to so much while we're here?

I think the world is an interesting place and I don't think anybody has the firm and final answer to what it is but I kind of assume there's a purpose.

I poured the wine into the chalice our church had given me. In the one-sixth gravity of the moon the wine curled slowly and gracefully up the side of the cup. It was interesting to think that the very first liquid ever poured on the moon, and the first food eaten there, were communion elements.

Astronauts will remain the explorers, the pioneers-the first to go back to moon and on to Mars. But I think it's really important to make space space available to as many people as we can. It's going to be a while before we can launch people for less than $20 million a ticket. But that day is coming.

I've been on the planet for 40 years now, and I'm still none the wiser as to what it's all about really. I've never worried about life's big questions. People at my age sit about pondering, 'Why are we here?' The only time I ever asked myself that is when Suzanne booked us a surprise holiday to Lanzarote.

Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about winning.

Trying to separate myself from my instincts of pessimism and cut out and define what it is that I really do love, what I'm here to be, why I'm here, and what I think is worth being alive for and fighting for. And those things change, but I think that that's something I am always chasing.

So when I think of, what is the meaning of life, to me, that's not an eternal unanswerable question. To me it is in arms reach of me every day.

Life is just a bag of pot.

When the Eagle landed on the moon, I was speechless—overwhelmed, like most of the world. Couldn't say a word. I think all I said was, 'Wow! Jeez!' Not exactly immortal. Well, I was nothing if not human.

What if the worst is true? What if there's no God, and you only go around once, and that's it? Don't you want to be a part of the experience? You know, what the hell? It's not all a drag, and I'm thinking to myself: Geez! I should stop ruining my life searching for answers I'm never gonna get and just enjoy it while it lasts. And, you know, after-who knows? Maybe there is something, nobody really knows. I know that maybe is a very slim reed to hang your whole life on, but that's the best we have.

You earn money, and one day money is there -- then life says to you, 'What have you got?' But you don't listen. Now you think you have to put your money into politics, you have to become a prime minister or a president -- then everything will be okay. One day you are a prime minister, and life again says, 'What have you got?' You don't listen. You go on thinking of something else and something else and something else. Life is vast -- that's why many lives are wasted.

I think so many times we focus so much on just the end result when when we finally reach that point we realize that was never the true goal. That was never really what it was all about.

I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon.

Many short-sighted fools think that going to the Moon was just a stunt. But the astronauts knew the meaning of what they were doing, as is shown by Neil Armstrong's first words in stepping down onto the soil of Luna: "One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind."

But why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may well ask; why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas?

I expected the unexpected and went [on the Moon] with an open mind. I think the visual scene was described by my words on first landing - "magnificent desolation." Magnificent for the achievement of being there, and desolate for the eons of lifelessness.

Reading those turgid philosophers here in these remote stone buildings may not get you a job, but if those books have forced you to ask yourself questions about what makes life truthful, purposeful, meaningful, and redeeming, you have the Swiss Army Knife of mental tools, and it's going to come in handy all the time.

I just don't think the moon is going to be an adequate substitute for the fact that we haven't addressed ourselves to clearing up the slums.

If there's a reason for the way that life is I'd like to find it. After all, who's life is it?

I can't think of a comparable level of cultural excitement about something since Neil Armstrong landed on the moon in the 1960s.

There's something in life that's a curtain, and I keep trying to raise it.

I'm offering a special prize for the first Buick on the moon.