Norman Cousins Quotes

As we leave the Moon at Taurus-Littrow, we leave as we came, and God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind.

The song 'What Goes Up' was inspired as I was playing the piano and reminiscing about the Spaceship One launches I witnessed in the Mojave desert. It is an awesome thing to comprehend the magnitude of what a human being dreams and imagines can be realized.

Throughout history, when societies have been faced with big challenges, they've put their best people on them. During the Space Race, American and Russian scientists, engineers, astronauts and cosmonauts pushed the bounds of what was possible and landed men on the moon.

That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.

I fell in love with Norman Mailer's 'Of a Fire on the Moon', a description of the 1969 moon landing and the society that had produced NASA - and was inspired by him to begin a kind of anthropology of modern life.

'Star Trek' posited a better future.

I'd love to jump in a spaceship and shoot myself to the moon, where I'll paint the word 'Love.' So when people step outside before they go to bed and look up to see it, they'll just dream of love.

I believed that once we got to the Moon, there was no stopping us. But in fact, we did stop.

It was the call of workers who organized; women who reached for the ballot; a President who chose the moon as our new frontier; and a King who took us to the mountain top and pointed the way to the Promised Land. Yes we can!

I've always wanted to be part of something that would radically change the world. . . . People forget the power of inspiration. All of humanity went to the moon with the Apollo missions. The issue was cost. There was no chance to build a base and create frequent flights. That's the problem I would like to solve.

History will remember the inhabitants of this century as the people who went from Kitty Hawk to the moon in 66 years, only to languish for the next 30 in low Earth orbit. At the core of the risk-free society is a self-indulgent failure of nerve.

A spacecraft is a metaphor of national inspiration: majestic, technologically advanced, produced at dear cost and entrusted with precious cargo, rising above the constraints of the earth. The spacecraft carries our secret hope that there is something better out there-a world where we may someday go and leave the sorrows of the past behind. The spacecraft rises toward the heavens exactly as, in our finest moments as a nation, our hearts have risen toward justice and principle.

I think the public needs to be reminded just how much inspiration and intention was given throughout the world to be bold, to send human beings to the moon in the '60s and the '70s. It's important now to bring together the nations that weren't able to do it then and help them do it. We need to move forward.

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It's not a miracle; we just decided to go.

We are the naked monkey that went to the moon. People seem to forget that.

Man has left footprints on the moon but still hasn't walked on the ocean floor.

What we will have attained when Neil Armstrong steps down upon the moon is a completely new step in the evolution of man.

We are the people who won the Second World War and saved the world. We went to the moon. We gave the world the cell phone and Bruce Springsteen. There's no telling what we can accomplish.

Every age has its dreams, its symbols of romance. Past generations were moved by the graceful power of the great windjammers, by the distant whistle of locomotives pounding through the night, by the caravans leaving on the Golden Road to Samarkand, by quinqueremes of Nineveh from distant Ophir . . . Our grandchildren will likewise have their inspiration-among the equatorial stars. They will be able to look up at the night sky and watch the stately procession of the Ports of Earth-the strange new harbors where the ships of space make their planetfalls and their departures.

The question that motivates my research is, if we can put a man on the Moon with 100,000 [people], what can we do with 100 million?

It is a commonplace of modern technology that problems have solutions before there is knowledge of how they are to be solved.

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."

That bright blue ball rising over the moon's surface, containing everything we hold dear - the laughter of children, a quiet sunset, all the hopes and dreams of posterity - that's what's at stake. That's what we're fighting for. And if we remember that, I'm absolutely sure we'll succeed.

The government needs a role in carrying out exploration. They will be leading the development of the engines that are needed, and the private sector will take advantage of those.

I will think of you every time I need to be reminded that there is beauty and goodness in the world.