Top 100 Chris Hadfield Quotes
#1. Airline food is cooked in an oven and then kept warm. Space station food is often cooked in an oven and then thermo-stabilised, irradiated or dehydrated and then stored for a year or two before you even get to it.
Chris Hadfield
#2. We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people.
Chris Hadfield
#3. So without that Canadian invention we were grounded. And so that was a really important and key part of the mission and Canadians should take real pride in it.
Chris Hadfield
#4. Our role is to develop techniques that allow us to provide emergency life-saving procedures to injured patients in an extreme, remote environment without the presence of a physician.
Chris Hadfield
#5. Spacewalking trumps everything. Viscerally, it is a phenomenal place to be; to be able to glance right and see the world, glance left and see the universe, and realise for a moment that you're holding on to your known existence with one hand. That's the thing.
Chris Hadfield
#6. I'm a mechanical engineer, and I grew up on a farm, so I like practical hardware - somebody's elegant solution that proves itself over the long term.
Chris Hadfield
#7. What really matters is not the value someone else assigns to a task but how I personally feel while performing it.
Chris Hadfield
#8. I'm not a wealthy person and I don't think that I would be able to prioritize that much money to go for a ride to a place that I have already lived. But if the price comes down or I win a lottery or something, why not?
Chris Hadfield
#9. I've raised three kids: my wife and I have three kids. I've observed through direct contact the adults they are now is partially the product of where they came from and what we did. With them growing up, but partially how they were wired at birth.
Chris Hadfield
#10. For whatever reason, I decided: 'I'm 18, I'm a man, I'm going to grow a moustache' - and it was pathetic for years - it was awful.
Chris Hadfield
#11. There's always constantly interesting things to do, and who knows, maybe I will be a good sculptor. I haven't decided what I am going to do next, but I am not going to quit just because I did something interesting.
Chris Hadfield
#12. Spaceflight isn't just about doing experiments, it's about an extension of human culture.
Chris Hadfield
#13. You should have a fear of some things. That doesn't mean it incapacitates you from your ability to figure out a way to deal with it.
Chris Hadfield
#14. When I did my spacewalks, it was during space station construction. So the shuttle was docked to the fledgling ISS at the time. So we would always stay tethered.
Chris Hadfield
#15. Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it's also so disappointing and self-defeating.
Chris Hadfield
#16. It's a really big deal to do a spacewalk. It's much riskier than staying indoors. It's complex. It uses up a lot of the precious resources onboard. It uses up oxygen. It uses up carbon dioxide scrubbers.
Chris Hadfield
#17. There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse
Chris Hadfield
#18. Every single day you're the result of what you did on the days prior.
Chris Hadfield
#19. Still, I also know that most people, including me, tend to applaud the wrong things: the showy, dramatic record-setting sprint rather than the years of dogged preparation or the unwavering grace displayed during a string of losses.
Chris Hadfield
#20. Wow, that was a really good sleep. I feel great. Hmm, that sounds like someone on the radio; maybe I'm still dreaming. Weird - the guy sounds a bit like Denis. Wait a sec. That is Denis. What's going on? Am I in an airplane?
Chris Hadfield
#21. You could look at something a hundred times from space, but the next time you come around the world, suddenly it's very different and gorgeous-looking, just because of the change of weather or the angle of the sun.
Chris Hadfield
#22. To be on my very first spacewalk, to be outside, and to have contamination in my suit to the point that I couldn't see in either eye - that, I think, would cause some people to lose control.
Chris Hadfield
#23. Waiting for him I check behind me, to be sure I haven't accidentally activated my backup tank of oxygen, and that's when I notice the universe. The scale is graphically shocking. The colors, too. The incongruity is stupefying: there I was, inside a small box, but now - how is this possible?
Chris Hadfield
#24. When you look out the window of a spaceship, you see entire countries, vast swaths of continents. One turn of the head covers what once took thousands of years to traverse at ground level.
Chris Hadfield
#25. And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.
Chris Hadfield
#26. It was remarkable to see from space how predictable people are. Our homes and towns are almost all in places with moderate temperatures, and they generally have the same shape - a thinly occupied outer blob of suburb surrounding a densely populated core, all based around a ready source of water.
Chris Hadfield
#28. Success is feeling good about the work you do throughout the long, unheralded journey that May or may not wind up at the launch pad. You can't view training solely as a stepping stone to something loftier. It's got to be an end in itself.
Chris Hadfield
#29. Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.
Chris Hadfield
#30. The exercise really had a lot less to do with water survival than with deliberate teamwork.
Chris Hadfield
#31. Even if you've been a plus one in a certain role - maybe especially if you've been a plus one - once your stint is over, it's time to aim to be a zero again.
Chris Hadfield
#32. Although simulators are great for building step-by-step knowledge of a procedure, the worst thing that can happen in a sim is that you get a bad grade on your performance.
Chris Hadfield
#33. To be one of the world's top space robotic arm operators is a necessary skill for an astronaut, but it doesn't have much carry-over.
Chris Hadfield
#34. The best way to contribute to a brand-new environment is not by trying to prove what a wonderful addition you are. It's by trying to have a neutral impact, to observe and learn from those who are already there, and to pitch in with the grunt work wherever possible.
Chris Hadfield
#35. 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.
Chris Hadfield
#36. You can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones. Ultimately, the real question is whether you want to be happy.
Chris Hadfield
#37. The rule of thumb is that you need a day on Earth to recover from each day in space,
Chris Hadfield
#38. Sometimes when people find out I'm an astronaut, they ask, "So what do you do when you're not flying in space?
Chris Hadfield
#39. On the day of the Boston Marathon bombings, for example, I actually knew more about what had happened than the CAPCOM I'd called.
Chris Hadfield
#40. Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive.
Chris Hadfield
#41. The communities and countries best at using energy to optimize a microclimate for human life are also the ones whose people have the longest average lifespans. Canada, Sweden, and Iceland - places with inhospitable winter weather - are frontrunners in sustaining human health and life.
Chris Hadfield
#42. But being a space flight participant is not really the same as being an astronaut. An astronaut is someone who's able to make good decisions quickly, with incomplete information, when the consequences really matter.
Chris Hadfield
#43. While on the space station, I kept up with news a couple of ways - Mission Control sent daily summaries, and I would scan headlines on Google News when we had an Internet connection, which was about half the time.
Chris Hadfield
#44. What I like to do when I get to a new place is buy local music early on and listen to it while we're driving around. I think it helps explain and illuminate the culture of where you are if local music is playing.
Chris Hadfield
#45. Value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you.
Chris Hadfield
#46. It's almost comical that astronauts are stereotyped as daredevils and cowboys. As a rule, we're highly methodical and detail-oriented. Our passion isn't for thrills but for the grindstone, and pressing our noses to it.
Chris Hadfield
#47. In the late '60s, I was seven, eight, nine years old, and what was going on in the news at that time that really excited a seven, eight, nine year old boy was the Space Race.
Chris Hadfield
#48. It's not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed.
Chris Hadfield
#49. "What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts.
Chris Hadfield
#50. No one ever accomplished anything great sitting down.
Chris Hadfield
#51. Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.
Chris Hadfield
#52. I've had a chance to see something that is way outside everybody else's frame of reference and gives a perspective that is very different from everyone else's.
Chris Hadfield
#53. If you start thinking that only your biggest and shiniest moments count, you're setting yourself up to feel like a failure most of the time.
Chris Hadfield
#54. It's good to have a fear of heights. I mean, it's kind of crazy not to because if you just lean out a little bit and there's a gust of wind or somebody bumps you or something and you fall, you're splat.
Chris Hadfield
#56. Just taking risks for risk's sake, that doesn't do it for me. I'm willing to take risks that I think are worth it, and I've worked so hard to make sure that I survive.
Chris Hadfield
#57. It's like being a newborn, this sudden sensory overload of noise, color, smells and gravity after months of quietly floating, encased in relative calm and isolation. No wonder babies cry in protest when they're born.
Chris Hadfield
#58. My father was an airline pilot, so we travelled more spontaneously than a lot of families. On a Thursday, we could decide to go somewhere like Barbados the next day for a long weekend.
Chris Hadfield
#59. As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.
Chris Hadfield
#60. The rough and ready improvisational quality to life on board the International Space Station is reminiscent of a long trip in a sailboat: privacy and fresh produce are in short supply, hygiene is basic, and a fair amount of the crew's time is spent just on maintaining and repairing the craft.
Chris Hadfield
#61. Space flight participants, commonly known as space tourists, pay between $20 and $40 million each to leave Earth for 10 days or so and go to the International Space Station (ISS) via Soyuz, the compact Russian rocket that is now the only way for humans to get to the ISS.
Chris Hadfield
#62. You don't need to obsess over details if you're willing to roll the dice and accept whatever happens. But if you're striving for excellence - whether it's in playing the guitar or flying a jet - there's no such thing as over-preparation.
Chris Hadfield
#63. Having a plan of action, even really mundane action, was a huge benefit in terms of adaptation to a radically new environment.
Chris Hadfield
#64. When I stand on the edge of a cliff or right at the edge of a building or something, it's one of the few things that gives me kind of a deep, overwhelming, irrational fear where it affects my physiology.
Chris Hadfield
#65. in 2007, Suni Williams ran the Boston Marathon in space, which took her only 4 hours and 24 minutes.)
Chris Hadfield
#66. Kazakhstan is not easy to get to unless you live in Kyrgyzstan.
Chris Hadfield
#68. Ever since I was nine years old and I watched Neil and Buzz walk on the moon, I have felt passionately that this is an interesting human adventure. This is one of the things we're doing that is really fundamentally important, as we leave our home planet, but also exciting.
Chris Hadfield
#69. When you're on one of the Caribbean islands, sometimes it's hard to picture how they fit in with the rest, but when you see them all joined together like a necklace from space, you see the natural geographic connectedness of them all.
Chris Hadfield
#70. Life off Earth is in two important respects not at all unworldly: you can choose to focus on the surprises and pleasures, or the frustrations. And you can choose to appreciate the smallest scraps of experience, the everyday moments, or to value only the grandest, most stirring ones.
Chris Hadfield
#71. Our three big emergencies are fire, loss of pressurization or contaminated atmosphere. Any of those things in a spaceship are very deadly and time critical. Everybody's trained, but I'm the commander of the ship, and it's up to me to decide.
Chris Hadfield
#72. In any field, it's a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.
Chris Hadfield
#73. Data gathered on the Shuttle and ISS help power Google Maps;
Chris Hadfield
#74. What I did each day would determine the kind of person I'd become.
Chris Hadfield
#75. We spend our days studying and simulating experiences we may never actually have. It's all pretend, really, but we are learning. And that, I think, is the point: learning.
Chris Hadfield
#76. I've been so lucky to have done two spacewalks. If you looked at your wristwatch, I was outside about 15 hours, which is about 10 times around the world. And, you know, there's a whole time dilation, distortion thing.
Chris Hadfield
#77. Sweat the small stuff. Without letting anyone see you sweat.
Chris Hadfield
#78. Nothing boosts confidence quite like simulating a disaster, engaging with it fully, both physically and intellectually, and realising you have the ability to work the problem.
Chris Hadfield
#79. You can't change the bricks, and together, you still have to build a wall.
Chris Hadfield
#80. The Soyuz craft weighs tons, and you're lying on the floor of it on your back. But the Russians do tell you, remember, before you land, stop talking so you don't bite your tongue off.
Chris Hadfield
#81. I guarantee if you walk into 100 spider webs, you will have changed your fundamental human behavior. And you can apply this to anything, And figure out a way to reprogram yourself, to change your primal fear.
Chris Hadfield
#82. The danger is different from the fear ... [practice] what to do if things go wrong, as well as right.
Chris Hadfield
#83. I watched the first people walk on the moon, and to me, it was just an obvious thing - I want to somehow turn myself into that. But the real question is, how do you deal with the danger of it and the fear that comes from it? How do you deal with fear versus danger?
Chris Hadfield
#84. As an astronaut, especially during launch, half of the risk of a six-month flight is in the first nine minutes.
Chris Hadfield
#85. Loneliness ... has very little to do with location. It's a state of mind. In the centre of every city are some of the loneliest people in the world ... because our whole planet was just outside the window, I felt even more ... connected to the seven billion other people ...
Chris Hadfield
#86. Good leadership means leading the way, not hectoring other people to do things your way.
Chris Hadfield
#87. An astronaut is someone who's able to make good decisions quickly, with incomplete information, when the consequences really matter. I didn't miraculously become one either, after just eight days in space. But I did get in touch with the fact that I didn't even know what I didn't know.
Chris Hadfield
#88. Didn't waste a second thinking about why I'd passed out. In a crisis, the "why" is irrelevant. I needed to accept where I found myself and prioritize what mattered right that minute, which was getting back on the ground ASAP.
Chris Hadfield
#89. the Russian engineers had taped, strapped and sealed our docking module's hatch just a little too enthusiastically, with multiple layers. So we did the true space-age thing: we broke into Mir using a Swiss Army knife. Never leave the planet without one. As
Chris Hadfield
#90. Life is just a lot better if you feel you're having 10 wins a day rather than a win every 10 years or so.
Chris Hadfield
#91. Anyone who views him- or herself as more important than the "little people" is not cut out for this job
Chris Hadfield
#92. If you don't like airline food, you'll probably have the same impression of space station food. I would not fly to space for the food.
Chris Hadfield
#93. In zero gravity, there's no need for a mattress or pillow; you already feel like you're resting on a cloud, perfectly supported, so there's no tossing and turning to find a more comfortable position.
Chris Hadfield
#94. Feeling ready to do something doesn't mean feeling certain you'll succeed, though of course that's what you're hoping to do. Truly being ready means understanding what could go wrong - and having a plan to deal with it.
Chris Hadfield
#95. I know everyone else on board did similarly unheralded, unobtrusively helpful things. We've all fixed the toilet in space (it breaks down regularly). We've all wiped jam off the walls (it has a way of floating off your toast and splattering everywhere).
Chris Hadfield
#96. I think there are lots of ways to exercise ambition and accomplish things using leadership without going into elected politics. So, categorically, I have no intention of going into elected politics. None.
Chris Hadfield
#97. When we first get to space, we feel sick. Your body is really confused. You're dizzy. Your lunch is floating around in your belly because you're floating. What you see doesn't match what you feel, and you want to throw up.
Chris Hadfield
#98. One place that I looked at a lot from space and which looks alluring is New Zealand, especially the North Island. It's a big broad valley with a river flowing through it, and you can see the wine-making dryness of the land.
Chris Hadfield
#99. But if you're striving for excellence - whether it's in playing the guitar or flying a jet - there's no such thing as over-preparation. It's your best chance of improving your odds. In
Chris Hadfield
#100. Every decision you make, from what you eat to what you do with your time tonight, turns you into who you are tomorrow and the day after that.
Chris Hadfield
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