Top 100 Hadfield Quotes
#1. Loneliness is not so much where you are, but instead is your state of mind" - Commander Hadfield
Nick Bilton
#2. By looking at the difference between perceived danger and actual danger, you can fundamentally change your reaction.
Chris Hadfield
#3. Nothing focuses your mind quite like flying a jet. That's one reason NASA requires that astronauts fly T-38s: it forces us to concentrate and prioritize in some of the same ways we need to in a rocket ship.
Chris Hadfield
#4. 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
#5. 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
#7. When you're the author of your own fate, you don't want to write a tragedy.
Chris Hadfield
#8. 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
#9. I once made myself black out by pulling G too quickly while flying an F-18. Being unconscious in a single-seat airplane is not good. Fortunately, I woke up in time. I learned how to better plug-in my anti-G suit.
Chris Hadfield
#10. And then finally, I'm the commander, so I am fundamentally responsible for the lives of the other people on board and the health and longevity of the space station. I need to bring six people back happy, healthy and feeling like they've had the best six months of their life.
Chris Hadfield
#11. 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
#12. 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
#13. Focus on the journey, not on arriving at a certain destination.
Chris Hadfield
#14. I don't want to be treated like I came from another planet or something or was somehow born with some weird birthright or super power. I don't view myself that way. I am a normal guy, picking up the crap from the dog and scraping the BBQ and having a beer and fixing the shed out back.
Chris Hadfield
#15. It is spectacular. From about five minutes in, when we knew for sure that we were going to have the weather to go, the smile on my face just got bigger and bigger, and I was just beaming through the whole launch. I mean, it is just an amazing ride.
Chris Hadfield
#16. No one ever accomplished anything great sitting down.
Chris Hadfield
#17. "What's the next thing that's going to kill me?" is a mantra for pilots and astronauts.
Chris Hadfield
#18. When you do understand the environment and can make an outstanding contribution, there's considerable wisdom in practicing humility. If you really are a plus one, people will notice - and they're even more likely to give you credit for it if you're not trying to rub their noses in your greatness.
Chris Hadfield
#19. It's not enough to shelve your own competitive streak. You have to try, consciously, to help others succeed.
Chris Hadfield
#20. 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
#21. 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
#22. Value the wisdom of humility, as well as the sense of perspective it gives you.
Chris Hadfield
#23. 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
#24. 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
#25. 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
#26. It's never either-or, never enjoyment versus advancement, so long as you conceive of advancement in terms of learning rather than climbing to the next rung of the professional ladder. You are getting ahead if you learn, even if you wind up staying on the same rung.
Chris Hadfield
#27. You can get claustrophobia and agoraphobia - a fear of wide, open spaces - simultaneously on a spacewalk.
Chris Hadfield
#28. They have the impression that between launches, we pretty much sit around in a waiting room in Houston trying to catch our breath before the next liftoff. Since you usually only hear about
Chris Hadfield
#29. In any field, it's a plus if you view criticism as potentially helpful advice rather than as a personal attack.
Chris Hadfield
#30. 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
#31. Early success is a terrible teacher. You're essentially being rewarded for a lack of preparation, so when you find yourself in a situation where you must prepare, you can't do it. You don't know how.
Chris Hadfield
#32. I've had a chance to fly a lot of different airplanes, but it was nothing like the shuttle ride.
Chris Hadfield
#33. 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
#34. 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
#35. 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
#36. No aeroplane you've ever gotten into had less than thousands of flights before they took their first passenger. Because vehicles are unsafe at first.
Chris Hadfield
#38. Kazakhstan is not easy to get to unless you live in Kyrgyzstan.
Chris Hadfield
#39. In my experience, fear comes from not knowing what to expect and not feeling you have any control over what's about to happen. When you feel helpless, you're far more afraid than you would be if you knew the facts.
Chris Hadfield
#40. 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
#41. in 2007, Suni Williams ran the Boston Marathon in space, which took her only 4 hours and 24 minutes.)
Chris Hadfield
#42. I was born in Sarnia, Ontario; a small town, it's where oil was pretty much discovered in North America.
Chris Hadfield
#43. 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
#44. I quickly learned that as the ex-whatever, you only get so many golden opportunities to keep your mouth shut, and you should take advantage of every single one.
Chris Hadfield
#45. Almost everything worthwhile carries with it some sort of risk, whether it's starting a new business, whether it's leaving home, whether it's getting married, or whether it's flying in space.
Chris Hadfield
#46. Having a plan of action, even really mundane action, was a huge benefit in terms of adaptation to a radically new environment.
Chris Hadfield
#47. 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
#48. 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
#49. 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
#50. As I have discovered again and again, things are never as bad (or as good) as they seem at the time.
Chris Hadfield
#51. 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
#52. 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
#53. 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
#54. 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
#55. Every single day you're the result of what you did on the days prior.
Chris Hadfield
#56. The cool things about space is when you put your pants on here, you can put them on two legs at a time.
Chris Hadfield
#57. I'm really looking forward to it, if you can imagine floating weightless, watching the world pour by through the big bay window of the space station playing a guitar; just a tremendous place to think about where we are in history.
Chris Hadfield
#58. There is no problem so bad that you can't make it worse
Chris Hadfield
#59. 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
#60. Cynicism is the easiest of all reactions, right? But it's also so disappointing and self-defeating.
Chris Hadfield
#61. 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
#62. 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
#63. the phone rang, and I picked it up in the kitchen. It was Mac Evans, asking if I wanted to be an astronaut.
Chris Hadfield
#64. Spaceflight isn't just about doing experiments, it's about an extension of human culture.
Chris Hadfield
#65. 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
#66. 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
#67. 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
#68. 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
#69. What really matters is not the value someone else assigns to a task but how I personally feel while performing it.
Chris Hadfield
#70. 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
#71. 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
#72. 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
#73. 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
#74. We are not machines exploring the universe, we are people.
Chris Hadfield
#75. Space exploration is inherently dangerous. If my focus ever wavers in the classroom or during an eight-hour simulation, I remind myself of one simple fact: space flight might kill me.
Chris Hadfield
#76. 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
#77. 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
#78. Anticipating problems and figuring out how to solve them is actually the opposite of worrying: it's productive.
Chris Hadfield
#79. She is an uber-doer, exactly the kind of person you want riding shotgun when you're chasing a big goal and also trying to have a life.
Chris Hadfield
#80. 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
#81. 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
#82. The rule of thumb is that you need a day on Earth to recover from each day in space,
Chris Hadfield
#83. 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
#84. 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
#85. 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
#86. I want to know: How does a space suit on Mars work? Show me how it is pressurized, and how it is cooled. What's the glove design? None of that stuff can be bought off the rack. It does not exist. You can't just go to SpaceMart and buy those things.
Chris Hadfield
#87. 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
#88. 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
#89. The beauty of the space station, and of human spaceflight, is that it is now at a level of maturity where you can invite people on-board, which is what I worked so hard to do on social media and all the videos I made.
Chris Hadfield
#90. The exercise really had a lot less to do with water survival than with deliberate teamwork.
Chris Hadfield
#91. Now, as an astronaut, I have to bring a Sharpie with me everywhere - so I have a pen to sign autographs.
Chris Hadfield
#92. I try to force my eyes open, but there's not much point - all I can see is a watery blur before my reflexes kick in and my eyelids close. In the space of just a few minutes, I've gone from 20/20 vision to blind. In space. Holding a drill.
Chris Hadfield
#93. 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
#94. We broke into Mir using a Swiss Army knife. Never leave the planet without one.
Chris Hadfield
#96. 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
#97. And now for Return to Flight, I'm chief of robotics working in the astronaut office in Houston, as a Canadian.
Chris Hadfield
#98. 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
#99. 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
#100. 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
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