Top 100 Buzz Aldrin Quotes
#1. I came to dedicate my life to opening space to the average person and crafting designs for new spaceships that could take us far from home. But since Apollo ended, such travels were only in our collective memory.
Buzz Aldrin
#2. My first biography written in '73 was not 'Journey To The Moon.' It was 'Return To Earth.' Because for me, that was the more difficult task - disappointment.
Buzz Aldrin
#3. Some things just can't be described. And stepping onto the moon was one of them.
Buzz Aldrin
#4. To me, money is a commodity that a person must have to function, not a goal in itself.
Buzz Aldrin
#5. You can never tell when a commercial space venture will suddenly become viable.
Buzz Aldrin
#6. It's not easy to get human beings into orbit. So far only three nations have been able to do that, with all the resources that they put together. And I'm just a little skeptical that that's going to be done by the private sector without making use of what has been done by the government.
Buzz Aldrin
#7. Maybe it was the challenge of flight, the opportunity to fly, the competition of summer camp and the inspiration and discipline of West Point. I think all of those things helped me to develop a dedication and inspired me to get ahead.
Buzz Aldrin
#8. Most people never believed in the real possibility of going to the moon, and neither did I until I was in my twenties.
Buzz Aldrin
#9. A mind concerned about danger is a clouded mind. It's paralyzing.
Buzz Aldrin
#10. 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.
Buzz Aldrin
#11. There's no guarantee that the United States will be around 200 years from now.
Buzz Aldrin
#12. Heavy lifting doesn't need to be heavy spending if we do the job right.
Buzz Aldrin
#13. Bravery comes along as a gradual accumulation of discipline.
Buzz Aldrin
#14. I suggest that going to Mars means permanence on the planet - a mission by which we are building up a confidence level to become a two-planet species.
Buzz Aldrin
#15. When I was a little kid, we only knew about our nine planets. Since then, we've downgraded Pluto but have discovered that other solar systems and stars are common. So life is probably quite prevalent.
Buzz Aldrin
#16. Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.
Buzz Aldrin
#17. Who put their foot in the Missouri River first: Lewis or Clark? Who cares!
Buzz Aldrin
#18. NASA's been one of the most successful public investments in motivating students to do well and achieve all they can achieve, and it's sad that we are turning the program in a direction where it will reduce the amount of motivation it provides to young people.
Buzz Aldrin
#19. I think I need to continue to think and plan and marry all of the different things that we could do that make transportation in space from the earth to the space station, from the earth to the moon to space stations around the moon to visiting an asteroid.
Buzz Aldrin
#20. The big companies are the private industry. But they're faced with a short-term need to show a profit in short-term.
Buzz Aldrin
#21. The purpose of going to Mars is for humans to first begin to occupy, permanently, another planet in the solar system. The astronauts or pilgrims, whatever you might call them, are going to be very historically unique human beings.
Buzz Aldrin
#22. I was motivated to improve the U.S. strategy of going back to the moon in 1985. That's a long time ago. Going back to the moon would be a great achievement for tourism adventure flights.
Buzz Aldrin
#23. I am excited to think that the development of commercial capabilities to send humans into low Earth orbit will likely result in so many more Earthlings being able to experience the transformative power of space flight.
Buzz Aldrin
#24. I think both the space shuttle program and the International Space Station program have not really lived up to their expectations.
Buzz Aldrin
#25. I've been to the Titanic in a yellow submarine and the North Pole in a Russian nuclear ice breaker.
Buzz Aldrin
#26. Not everyone will understand this need for America to lead the world in space.
Buzz Aldrin
#27. I'm in favor of changing the destination of humans. There are a lot of manned missions that can be done, but not in the direction of the moon.
Buzz Aldrin
#28. 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.
Buzz Aldrin
#29. I inherited depression from my mother's side of the family.
Buzz Aldrin
#30. We need to have people up there who can communicate what it feels like, not just pilots and engineers.
Buzz Aldrin
#31. My Sunday mornings are spent in a recovery meeting in Pacific Palisades.
Buzz Aldrin
#32. Everyone should take their hats off to Neil Armstrong. He is a humble guy who doesn't wave his own flag.
Buzz Aldrin
#33. With his deeds, not only words, President Obama has revitalized our struggling space program.
Buzz Aldrin
#34. Mars is the symbolic and totally stimulating next objective that could so dominate the next century's exploration efforts. From Mars, the resources of all the asteroids will become readily available.
Buzz Aldrin
#35. Kids, help your parents if they don't know how to use a smartphone.
Buzz Aldrin
#36. I think the climate has been changing for billions of years.
Buzz Aldrin
#37. We need the next generation to be motivated and to push technological boundaries, to seek out new innovations.
Buzz Aldrin
#38. You can tell I'm not too bashful about some of my feelings.
Buzz Aldrin
#39. I'm not in favor of just taking short-term isolated situations and depleting our resources to keep our climate just the way it is today.
Buzz Aldrin
#40. Returning to the Moon with NASA astronauts is not the best usage of our resources. Because OUR resources should be directed to outward, beyond-the-moon, to establishing habitation and laboratories on the surface of Mars that can be built, assembled, from the close-by moons of Mars.
Buzz Aldrin
#41. My expertise is the space program and what it should be in the future based on my experience of looking at the transitions that we've made between pre-Sputnik days and getting to the moon.
Buzz Aldrin
#42. We could have human intelligence in orbit around Mars, building things there.
Buzz Aldrin
#43. I think the people who experienced the Apollo missions came away from that experience wondering to themselves, 'When can we get a chance to experience spaceflight?' I've heard that many, many times: that people got into a new career field hoping that they would be able to experience spaceflight.
Buzz Aldrin
#44. For every winner, there's a loser. And that person didn't really need to lose. They just didn't understand the game plan.
Buzz Aldrin
#45. Because of his military service, Dad was buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Buzz Aldrin
#46. I don't think we're going to build a 50-person spacecraft or a 100-person spacecraft.
Buzz Aldrin
#47. Astronauts are not superhuman. They lead ordinary lives and have varied personalities.
Buzz Aldrin
#48. If you want poets in space, you'll have to wait.
Buzz Aldrin
#49. People communicate in Twittering ways. I've learned how to do that.
Buzz Aldrin
#50. We have the ability, at such high fidelity, to simulate the physical world through computers. But when the spiritual world or human behavior comes into play, we don't have a very good model for that at all.
Buzz Aldrin
#51. They didn't tell me I was going into space until after they locked the shuttle doors and started counting down.
Buzz Aldrin
#52. There's no doubt that there will be many trials and tribulations along the way in taming space for the benefit of all, unmasking its truths and using the boundless resources available to us. Taking a chance allows us to seek new horizons
and we all benefit from being horizon hunters.
Buzz Aldrin
#53. I really hate to be put in the position of trying to justify something, a decision that was made. I'm a military guy: when a decision is made, I go along with it, whatever the manufactured controversy and criticism.
Buzz Aldrin
#54. We should've asked China to be a portion of the space station. We should've worked out ways that we can ... just give away the technology that we have that puts things up into space, with cooperation up above the atmosphere that's needed to help each other.
Buzz Aldrin
#55. When President Kennedy took office, I was in the midst of my education.
Buzz Aldrin
#56. Space tourism is a logical outgrowth of the adventure tourist market.
Buzz Aldrin
#57. A family needs to work as a team, supporting each other's individual aims and aspirations.
Buzz Aldrin
#58. Computers allow us to squeeze the most out of everything, whether it's Google looking up things, so I guess that tends to make us a little lazy about reading books and doing things the hard way to understand how those things work.
Buzz Aldrin
#59. I realize that my life is not the common ordinary person.
Buzz Aldrin
#60. As we begin to have landings on the moon, we can alternate those with vertical launch of similar crew modules on similar launch vehicles for vertical-launch tourism in space, if you want to call it that ... adventure travel.
Buzz Aldrin
#61. There are a lot of reasons for not doing something. And if humanity had come up with all the reasons for not doing something we wouldn't have spread across the Earth the way we have. There's a curiosity, and I would submit that that curiosity will put human beings on the surface of Mars.
Buzz Aldrin
#62. I'm sure that there are places in the deserts in Australia that could be similar to where we might want to go on Mars.
Buzz Aldrin
#63. I want people to go into space, to orbit around the world a few times, even to stay there for 24 hours and then come back to where they took off. And I also want people with a low income to be able to do that, not only rich people.
Buzz Aldrin
#64. I wrote 'Reaching for the Moon' because I wanted to tell kids that all of us have a moon, a dream, that we can strive for. Even if you don't attain it, you can at least reach for it.
Buzz Aldrin
#65. I have no intention of selling any more of the historical Apollo 11 items in my possession for the remainder of my life. I intend to pass a portion of these items on to my children and to loan the most important items for permanent display in suitable museums around the country.
Buzz Aldrin
#66. Save the taxpayer's money by canceling the Ares 1 and V.
Buzz Aldrin
#67. The universe is the way it is. It's not going to be changed by supplications.
Buzz Aldrin
#68. You are not going to change the minds of people who are looking for attention.
Buzz Aldrin
#69. What comes after the moon? I think you can guess: Mars.
Buzz Aldrin
#70. When we get there, if we don't find any life on Mars, from that point on there will be life on Mars because we'll bring it there, whether it's germs and leftover urine bags, whatever it is.
Buzz Aldrin
#71. As we reflect back upon the tragic loss of Challenger and her brave crew of heroes who were aboard that fateful day, I am reminded that they truly represented the best of us, as they climbed aloft on a plume of propellant gasses, reaching for the stars, to inspire us who were Earthbound.
Buzz Aldrin
#72. People come up to me and say, 'It's too bad the space program got canceled.' This is not the case, and yet that is what most of the public thinks has happened.
Buzz Aldrin
#73. Can you imagine, in 2030, taking a space cruise on the very ship that carried the first human beings to Mars? I can't believe that people wouldn't line up for that possibility.
Buzz Aldrin
#75. I shot down two airplanes in Korea, so I wasn't a slouch.
Buzz Aldrin
#76. Pascal Lee is a true pioneer of Mars exploration.
Buzz Aldrin
#77. I think we need to move to the moons of Mars and learn how to control robots that are on the surface. It's not the impatient way of getting there, but Mars has been there a long time.
Buzz Aldrin
#78. Ray Bradbury is one who is contributing to the understanding of the imagination and the curiosity of the human race.
Buzz Aldrin
#79. We must still think of ourselves as pioneers to understand the importance of space.
Buzz Aldrin
#80. The way I see it, commercial interests should manage a lunar base while NASA gets on with the really important task of flying to Mars.
Buzz Aldrin
#81. Landing in the ocean and waiting for the Navy to come alongside and haul you out of the drink is what space capsules require. And after the capsule is recovered, it would take weeks for the ship to return to port.
Buzz Aldrin
#82. I understand that Detroit was a pretty rough place to grow up in the '70s and '80s.
Buzz Aldrin
#83. The best way to study Mars is with two hands, eyes and ears of a geologist, first at a moon orbiting Mars ... and then on the surface.
Buzz Aldrin
#84. Long-term, I see robotics prevailing on the moon ... The most important decision we'll have to make about space travel is whether to commit to a permanent human presence on Mars. Without it, we'll never be a true space-faring people.
Buzz Aldrin
#85. The life expectancy of people going to Mars may be decreased by the higher level of radiation that they receive.
Buzz Aldrin
#86. The feeling of reduced gravity and the limitations of the space suit resulted in a slow-motion movement. Perhaps not too far from a trampoline, but without the springiness and instability.
Buzz Aldrin
#87. From the distance of the moon, Earth was four times the size of a full moon seen from Earth. It was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky.
Buzz Aldrin
#88. Human rights problems will always exist for years to come, but maybe they'll lessen somewhat.
Buzz Aldrin
#89. Any observations from the Moon or a sense of realising this or that about the greater meaning of things wasn't as influential for me as the experience of coming back and dealing with being a person who's been to the Moon.
Buzz Aldrin
#90. Mars has a bit of air pressure; maybe we can build up that atmosphere to be a bit more accommodating to humans.
Buzz Aldrin
#91. Space travel for everyone is the next frontier in the human experience.
Buzz Aldrin
#92. By venturing into space, we improve life for everyone here on Earth - scientific advances and innovations that come from this kind of research create products we use in our daily lives.
Buzz Aldrin
#93. For the future, primarily, we must educate people in science, engineering, technology and math.
Buzz Aldrin
#94. I didn't start skiing until I was 50. My wife Lois taught me how to ski. I'm proficiently conservative.
Buzz Aldrin
#95. Fighter pilots have ice in their veins. They don't have emotions. They think, anticipate. They know that fear and other concerns cloud your mind from what's going on and what you should be involved in.
Buzz Aldrin
#96. If you want to say that the sky is black, and if I'm there, even if I fall back down again, I will be weightless for a period of time - maybe that's the definition of space.
Buzz Aldrin
#97. There are a lot of people that get interested in something, and they hear about it, and they read about it, and then they watch it happen, and that's why I had quite an interest in the lottery because you'd interest a lot of people, and then just a few would win a chance to do something.
Buzz Aldrin
#98. There are always door openings. And gradually, it accumulates. The opportunities open up in front of you.
Buzz Aldrin
#99. I expected the unexpected and went [on the Moon] with an open mind. I think the visual scene was described by my words on first landing - "magnificent desolation." Magnificent for the achievement of being there, and desolate for the eons of lifelessness.
Buzz Aldrin
#100. Exploration is wired into our brains. If we can see the horizon, we want to know what's beyond.
Buzz Aldrin
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
