I have a hunch the most important reason we're going to space is not known now.

In 12 or 15 years, there will be routine, affordable space tourism not just in the U.S. but in a lot of countries.

Usually the wacky people have the breakthroughs. The smart people dont.

A NASA astronaut and a Russian cosmonaut can't be creative. He has to follow a predetermined detailed checklist written by an engineer and if he gets a little creative he'll never fly again.

I believe that research, that you can claim that you're doing research only if half of the people, and I'm talking about half of the experts, believe that the goal is impossible.

A true creator researches how to have confidence in nonsense.

NASA's myriad failures are in many ways the natural consequence of a catastrophic combination of bureaucracy, monopoly, and a calcifying aversion to the kind of risk necessary for innovation.

Everything looks nonsensical before it works.

Testing leads to failure, and failure leads to understanding

Look at the aerospace industry as it was just after the Kennedy talk. We were hiring like crazy. We were trying to get people graduated from college. Hey, you got to go to the program. We need you.

It's not good enough for us to have generations of kids that ... look forward to a better version of a cell phone with a video in it. They need to look forward to exploration.

What you're supposed to do when you don't like a thing is change it. If you can't change it, change the way you think about it. Don't complain.

If a man can preach one sermon without mentioning Christ's name in it, it ought to be his last.

Hasn't it been a long time since you had a flying dream?

Treat yourself as if you already are enough. Walk as if you are enough. Eat as if you are enough. See, look, listen as if you are enough. Because it's true.

There is no such thing as no chance.

I feel a great comfort and relief knowing that there are others who lived and died and thought and fought so long ago; I feel less tyrannized by the present day.

I mean, I went to a Catholic boys school for a year, but that was to play hockey. Religion class was quite contentious for me.

This is the secret of propaganda: To totally saturate the person, whom the propaganda wants to lay hold of, with the ideas of the propaganda, without him even noticing that he is being saturated.

He to whom the present is the only thing that is present, knows nothing of the age in which he lives.