Do you realize that if you fall into a black hole, you will see the entire future of the Universe unfold in front of you in a matter of moments and you will emerge into another space-time created by the singularity of the black hole you just fell into?

There are no passengers on spaceship earth. We are all crew.

We have the capability - physically, technically - to protect the Earth from asteroid impacts. We are now able to very slightly and subtly reshape the solar system in order to enhance human survival.

So most astronauts getting ready to lift off are excited and very anxious and worried about that explosion - because if something goes wrong in the first seconds of launch, there's not very much you can do.

The day is not far off when we will be able to send a robotically controlled genome-sequencing unit in a probe to other planets to read the DNA sequence of any alien microbe life that may be there.

The Universe is under no obligation to make sense to you.

When you look at the stars and the galaxy, you feel that you are not just from any particular piece of land, but from the solar system.

There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.

I think we are at the dawn of a new era in commercial space exploration.

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.

After one look at this planet any visitor from outer space would say 'I want to see the manager.'

I would rather be a superb meteor, every atom of me in magnificent glow, than a sleepy and permanent planet.

For NASA, space is still a high priority.

Time and space - time to be alone, space to move about - these may well become the great scarcities of tomorrow.

Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the drug store, but that's just peanuts to space.

Oh, don't let's ask for the moon. We've already got the stars.

For the wise man looks into space and he knows there is no limited dimensions.

The stars don't look bigger, but they do look brighter.

The stars, that nature hung in heaven, and filled their lamps with everlasting oil, give due light to the misled and lonely traveller.

What can we gain by sailing to the moon if we are not able to cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves? This is the most important of all voyages of discovery, and without it, all the rest are not only useless, but disastrous.

One in 200 stars has habitable Earth-like planets surrounding it - in the galaxy, half a billion stars have Earth-like planets going around them - that's huge, half a billion. So when we look at the night sky, it makes sense that someone is looking back at us.

Well, I don't think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.

The most important thing we can do is inspire young minds and to advance the kind of science, math and technology education that will help youngsters take us to the next phase of space travel.

The world, when you look at it, it just can't be random. I mean, it's so different than the vast emptiness that is everything else, and even all the other planets we've seen, at least in our solar system, none of them even remotely resemble the precious life-giving nature of our own planet.

We travel together, passengers on a little spaceship, dependent on its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed, for our safety, to its security and peace. Preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and the love we give our fragile craft.

I think space exploration is very important. I think there is very intelligent life on Mars. I believe that Martians are spying on us from the bottom of the ocean.

I won't say that I'm an agnostic, since agnosticism maintains that one cannot know... but I'm not averse to the idea of some intelligence or some organizing force that set up the initial conditions of the universe in such a way that ultimately generated stars, planets and life.

Age can be wonderful for red wine, but not for spacecraft.

Sometimes I think we're alone in the universe, and sometimes I think we're not. In either case the idea is quite staggering.

It takes a planet to explore the universe.

Time travel used to be thought of as just science fiction, but Einstein's general theory of relativity allows for the possibility that we could warp space-time so much that you could go off in a rocket and return before you set out.

We will build new ships to carry man forward into the universe, to gain a new foothold on the moon and to prepare for new journeys to the worlds beyond our own.

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

Space is to place as eternity is to time.

Great industries are never made from single companies. There is room in space for a lot of winners.

I think the universe is pure geometry - basically, a beautiful shape twisting around and dancing over space-time.

I would like to die on Mars. Just not on impact.

You cannot look up at the night sky on the Planet Earth and not wonder what it's like to be up there amongst the stars. And I always look up at the moon and see it as the single most romantic place within the cosmos.

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.

When a place gets crowded enough to require ID's, social collapse is not far away. It is time to go elsewhere. The best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere.

A black hole really is an object with very rich structure, just like Earth has a rich structure of mountains, valleys, oceans, and so forth. Its warped space whirls around the central singularity like air in a tornado.

To me, a building - if it's beautiful - is the love of one man, he's made it out of his love for space, materials, things like that.

I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.

If the Sun and Moon should ever doubt, they'd immediately go out.

Mankind will not forever remain on Earth but, in the pursuit of light and space, will first timidly emerge from the bounds of the atmosphere and then advance until he has conquered the whole of circumsolar space.

Perhaps when distant people on other planets pick up some wavelength of ours all they hear is a continuous scream.

I'm never going to go to Mars, but I've helped inspire, thank goodness, the people who built the rockets and sent our photographic equipment off to Mars.

People need to be made conscious of a very simple reality: we have no choice but to share this planet, this small blue sphere floating in the vast reaches of space, with all of our fellow 'passengers.'

Put three grains of sand inside a vast cathedral, and the cathedral will be more closely packed with sand than space is with stars.

They say any landing you can walk away from is a good one.

Planets move in ellipses with the Sun at one focus.

You never enjoy the world aright, till the sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with the stars.

Space offers extraordinary potential for commerce and adventure, for new innovations and new tests of will. As Americans, we can't help but reach for the stars. It's our nature. It's our destiny.

The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage.

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

Hey sky, take off your hat, I'm on my way!

Space exploration promised us alien life, lucrative planetary mining, and fabulous lunar colonies. News flash, ladies and gents: Space is nearly empty. It's a sterile vacuum, filled mostly with the junk we put up there.

Those are the same stars, and that is the same moon, that look down upon your brothers and sisters, and which they see as they look up to them, though they are ever so far away from us, and each other.

The rockets and the satellites, spaceships that we're creating now, we're pollinating the universe.

The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever.

I make spaces that are calm rather than confrontational. I seek a certain kind of logic that allows you to move in space and perceive it as beautiful and rational. Clarity is a worthwhile quality.

America has tossed its cap over the wall of space.

Modern science says: 'The sun is the past, the earth is the present, the moon is the future.' From an incandescent mass we have originated, and into a frozen mass we shall turn. Merciless is the law of nature, and rapidly and irresistibly we are drawn to our doom.

Whenever I gaze up at the moon, I feel like I'm on a time machine. I am back to that precious pinpoint of time, standing on the foreboding - yet beautiful - Sea of Tranquility. I could see our shining blue planet Earth poised in the darkness of space.

The math is dead simple: it seems that the frequency of planets able to support life is roughly one percent. In other words, a billion or more such worlds exist in our galaxy alone. That's a lot of acreage, and it takes industrial-strength credulity to believe it's all bleakly barren.

Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upwards.

Everything has a natural explanation. The moon is not a god, but a great rock, and the sun a hot rock.

We are aware only of the empty space in the forest, which only yesterday was filled with trees.

When you launch in a rocket, you're not really flying that rocket. You're just sort of hanging on.

When you gaze at stars and think about planets, the places it takes your imagination are amazing! You look up the sky, and you know the stars have always been here; they were referenced in biblical times and have always been present. They are somewhere up there in the future, and they guide you; they make you feel safe.

At night, when the sky is full of stars and the sea is still you get the wonderful sensation that you are floating in space.

Before we had airplanes and astronauts, we really thought that there was an actual place beyond the clouds, somewhere over the rainbow. There was an actual place, and we could go above the clouds and find it there.

It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.

If you are in a spaceship that is traveling at the speed of light, and you turn on the headlights, does anything happen?

I'd like to go to another planet, which I might live long enough to accomplish. Just get on a spaceship and go. But not the moon. I don't see any flowers there. The moon is too close. I want to go further.

A word carries far, very far, deals destruction through time as the bullets go flying through space.

Astronauts are very professional and when they're preparing for launch, they prepare for it as the most serious endeavor of our lives.

There is just one thing I can promise you about the outer-space program - your tax-dollar will go further.

What we observe as material bodies and forces are nothing but shapes and variations in the structure of space.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Who among us has never looked up into the heavens on a starlit night, lost in wonder at the vastness of space and the beauty of the stars?

Space is an inspirational concept that allows you to dream big.

The earth together with its surrounding waters must in fact have such a shape as its shadow reveals, for it eclipses the moon with the arc of a perfect circle.

Ye stars! which are the poetry of heaven!

Architecture is basically the design of interiors, the art of organizing interior space.

The microgravity or the very, very low amount of gravity that we have up in space forces some changes in different processes. It forces changes in us as human beings.

NASA was going to pick a public school teacher to go into space, observe and make a journal about the space flight, and I am a teacher who always dreamed of going up into space.

There is one person who sends me three cards every year. One on New Year's, one for my birthday and the third that marks the anniversary of my flight into space.

The eternal silence of these infinite spaces frightens me.

I see nothing in space as promising as the view from a Ferris wheel.

The moon is a friend for the lonesome to talk to.

Every bit of me is devoted to love and art. And I aspire to try to be a teacher to my young fans who feel just like I felt when I was younger. I just felt like a freak. I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm trying to liberate them, I want to free them of their fears and make them feel that they can make their own space in the world.

Empty space is a boiling, bubbling brew of virtual particles that pop in and out of existence in a time scale so short that you can't even measure them.

Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a humdrum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.

If the Earth gets hit by an asteroid, it's game over. It's control-alt-delete for civilization.

Eventually there are going to be cities in space.

My childhood dreams were focused on being part of the effort to make humanity a multiplanetary species.

Houston, we've had a problem.

There is one person who sends me three cards every year. One on New Year's, one for my birthday and the third that marks the anniversary of my flight into space.