Neil Armstrong Quotes

As humans, we're such a discontented species. We're always trying to further ourselves, and you get all the way to the moon, and then it's just discontent. You want to go to Mars.

Why had we come to the moon? The thing presented itself to me as a perplexing problem. What is this spirit in man that urges him for ever to depart from happiness and security, to toil, to place himself in danger, to risk an even a reasonable certainty of death? It dawned upon me that there in the moon as a thing I ought always to have known, that man is not made to go about safe and comfortable and well fed and amused. ... against his interest, against his happiness, he is constantly being driven to do unreasonable things. Some force not himself impels him, and he must go.

I know enough about the moon to know how unpleasant and inhospitable it is. . . . I know enough about Mars to know that you can't live there, you can't settle it. Mars and the moon are two ugly islands. So then, you say, what's the point of going to them? The point is to be able to say I've been there, I've set foot on them, and I can go further to look for beautiful islands.

I'm always looking for challenges.

Many years ago the great British explorer George Mallory, who was to die on Mount Everest, was asked why did he want to climb it. He said Because it is there. Well, space is there, and were going to climb it, and the moon and the planets are there, and new hopes for knowledge and peace are there.

We need a space program because we need explorers. Its in our souls.

Perhaps one day I will go into space.

The practical case for manned spacef light gets ever-weaker with each advance in robots and miniaturisation - indeed, as a scientist or practical man, I see little purpose in sending people into space at all. But as a human being, I'm an enthusiast for manned missions.

We have been crafted by disaster to push out to the utmost horizon to find out what's on the other side of it. That's in our nature. What's also in our nature is a profound love and connection to our children and our communities. Those two things are very much at conflict with one another at certain moments.

I actually want to go up into space.

I'll tell you, being involved in human space flight, it is an emotional endeavor. I think it brings in the highest highs and the lowest lows.

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.

The human race has a yearning to explore. That's part of our biological and psychological makeup.

I don't think the space station is innovative. Going to the moon was innovative because we had no idea how to do it.

Go to the moon - that's my dream.

When I was younger, humans went to the moon when I was about 4 years old, and I imagined that as I got older and became an adult that traveling in space was going to be fairly common and something that we all did. So I grew up believing that I'll be an astronaut just like these guys were that were going to the moon.

I want manned spaceflight, not just back to the Moon, but beyond that. And I want my daughters and my son to have their own July 20, 1969, to remember. Apollo 11 didn't give us wings; it only showed us how far the wings we had would take us.

Our whole approach to space has been very male. We wont up to the moon ...walked on it. And we never went back. We never called. We never wrote. It's the typical one night stand.

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

I don't think anyone flies into space without some form of fundamental introspection about what life is about.

You could take me anywhere. You could take me to the moon, and believe me, everybody's going to try to take a trip to the moon to watch me fight.

I was thinking as a little girl growing up that I would be there. When I look at whether we can go to Mars, it's definitely something we can do.

There have to be reasons that you get up in the morning and you want to live. Why do you want to live? What's the point? What inspires you? What do you love about the future? If the future does not include being out there among the stars and being a multi-planet species, I find that incredibly depressing.

I think, just philosophically, we're made to explore.

I think the curiosity of mankind, that we want something unknown. Like, 500 years ago, humankind wanted to know what the other side of the ocean is, and it was a very risky project, and then we decided that probably we can fly; let's fly higher. And now we're flying space station, and still it's not enough for us: we want to know what's beyond.