There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

We got to the moon on Christmas Eve 1968, at the end of a poor year for this country. We had Vietnam. We had civil unrest. We had the assassinations of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King. But we went around the moon and saw the far side for the first time. A script writer couldn't have done a better job of raising people's hope.

If you're going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What's the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

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.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

Be thankful for problems. If they were less difficult, someone with less ability might have your job.

Houston, we've had a problem.

The fascination to go into space has existed for hundreds of years. But as we do things and they're successful, people get bored.

For some time, I thought Apollo 13 was a failure. I was disappointed I didn't get to land on the moon. But actually, it turned out to be the best thing that could have happened.