Theodore Hesburgh Quotes

It was Apollo 8 that first showed us the tiny blue marble of Earth floating in the void of space, one of the great psychological shifts in human history. From out there, we can both appreciate and begin to solve the problems of our world in ways unavailable to us otherwise.

The most breathtaking thing about being in space is actually looking back at the Earth.

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.

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that men set foot on the moon but that they set eye on the earth.

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

Our little Spaceship Earth is only eight thousand miles in diameter, which is almost a negligible dimension in the great vastness of space.

I think the one overwhelming emotion that we had was when we saw the Earth rising in the distance over the lunar landscape - it makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away, it really is a small planet.

As we begin to comprehend that the earth itself is a kind of manned spaceship hurtling through the infinity of space ~ it will seem increasingly absurd that we have not better organized the life of the human family.

It's been written about as "the overview effect." All I can give you is my perspective, but most all of the people who have been in space start to see the world without boundaries. You start to think about how we can keep doing these things we're doing that are destructive of the environment and destructive of the planet. It causes you to start to think things in a quite different way than we had before.

When I saw the Earth from above, personally, as a spacecraft operator, it certainly reinforced and drove home the fact that there's one place where we can live right now. The seven billion of us are sharing a wonderful planet, and it's an absolute privilege to see it from above.

From the rocket we can see the huge sphere of the planet in one or another phase of the Moon. We can see how the sphere rotates, and how within a few hours it shows all its sides successively ... and we shall observe various points on the surface of the Earth for several minutes and from different sides very closely. This picture is so majestic, attractive and infinitely varied that I wish with all my soul that you and I could see it.

Hello from above our magnificent planet Earth.

Once you've been in space, you appreciate how small and fragile the Earth is.

We've gotta reinvest in space travel. We should've never left the moon.

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.

I'd love to be an astronaut. I bet you get a better understanding of our planet seeing it from a distance.

I think the legacy of the space station will be that we can do something this technically complex in an international way.

In order to be stimulated or moved in the future, we probably have to go into space and look at our world from there.

It changes your perspective to be able to look out the window and see the planet. One of the thoughts that I had when I first got up here was, 'We really do live on a planet, and we are in a solar system, and we are flying through space right now.' I mean, this is something that you know, obviously, but to see the planet - it's amazing.

I think there's going to be a very sudden shift in people's perception of the International Space Station, because suddenly it's going to look much, much bigger than it already is.

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.

It's tiny out there...it's inconsequential. It's ironic that we had come to study the Moon and it was really discovering the Earth.

I think, actually, that it's a really fascinating time in history because the development of modern technology and the photographs the satellites were taking from space were mapping the earth in a new way, making us feel like the globe we inhabit is much smaller than previously conceived of, in the human mind.

The Russians haven't been to the moon. You know why? Because they're space pussies... You really want to impress us? Bring us back our FLAG!