Rakesh Sharma Quotes

I see Earth! It is so beautiful!

Not enough people in this world, I think, carry a cosmic perspective with them. It could be life-changing.

You develop a sympathy for all human beings when you travel a lot.

Man must rise above the Earth -- to the top of the atmosphere and beyond -- for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives

Travel gives a character of experience to our knowledge.

Spaceflight gives us a chance to reflect on the context of our existence. We are reminded that we are human before any of our differences, before all of the lines are drawn that divide us.

We are lucky to live on such a planet, and we should not take it for granted. After my space experience, I am a lot more tolerant of people and opinions, of everything.

I love people that kind of have those life experiences that take them different places.

Well, we now have such a photograph... Has any new idea been let loose? It certainly has. You will have noticed how suddenly everybody has become seriously concerned to protect the natural environment... It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.

When I circled the moon and looked back at Earth, my outlook on life and my viewpoint of Earth changed... Earth is a spaceship, just like Apollo - and just like Apollo, the crew must learn to live and work together. We must learn to manage the resources of this world with new imagination.

With the moon walk, the religious myth that sustained these notions could no longer be held. With our view of earthrise, we could see that the earth and the heavens were no longer divided but that the earth is in the heavens. (105)

Once a photograph of the Earth, taken from outside, is available, once the sheer isolation of the Earth becomes known, a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me -- a small disk, 240,000 miles away. . . . Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence, don't show from that distance.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced lack of need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities. I am truly a 'lone traveler' and have never belonged to my country, my home, my friends, or even my immediate family, with my whole heart; in the face of all these ties, I have never lost a sense of distance and a need for solitude.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves?

See what the world looks like from orbit. Well, in that way, at least, there was profit to be had. Nobody could look down at the planet, green and blue, with no borders in evidence and no sign of human habitation, and not get his perspective forever altered.

Probably over half of America does not have a passport. If young people could spend two weeks of their life in India or pick an African country to go to for 2-3 weeks and really see how life can be. That might be a real good thing because I think they would see things even if the trip was a nightmare. I think they might understand more of the mechanics of the world.

Coping with the totality of Spaceship Earth and universe is ahead for all of us.

The view from space is like having a globe on your desk -- it's a broadening experience.

The image of Earth from space transformed our view of ourselves. It is maybe the most important image that exists - because we can see ourselves in context in a way that otherwise would be really hard to explain. It should inspire us to wonder about it, to want to know everything we can about it and do everything we can to take care of it.

I’m struck again by the irony that spaceflight-conceived in the cauldron of nationalist rivalries and hatreds-brings with it a stunning transnational vision. You spend even a little time contemplating the Earth from orbit and the most deeply engrained nationalisms begin to erode. They seem the squabbles of mites on a plum.

Without travel I would have wound up a little ignorant white Southern female, which was not my idea of a good life.

As man draws nearer to the stars, why should he not also draw nearer to his neighbor?

Adversity is just change that we haven't adapted ourselves to yet.