The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.

Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center — an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman’s earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

Dinosaurs are extinct today because they lacked opposable thumbs and the brainpower to build a space program.

To go places and do things that have never been done before – that’s what living is all about.

If you could see the earth illuminated when you were in a place as dark as night, it would look to you more splendid than the moon.

There can be no thought of finishing for ‘aiming for the stars.’ Both figuratively and literally, it is a task to occupy the generations. And no matter how much progress one makes, there is always the thrill of just beginning.