When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.

Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

We were only on orbit a little over two days so we had no adverse effects from being weightless...

You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.

We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast.

I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...

The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to... spend some time looking out at this beautiful spaceship Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

Selection of crews is always been somewhat of a mystery.

Behaviour is a mirror in which every one displays his own image.

Criminals are never very amusing. It's because they're failures. Those who make real money aren't counted as criminals. This is a class distinction, not an ethical problem.

To scorn philosophy is truly to philosophize.

I always get this feeling on my last day of work that I'm never going to work again.

The scenery is time bound but the seer is timeless. You are the timeless seer in the midst of time bound scenery.

Success doesn't just happen. It starts for those who take action.

Money is the source of the greatest vice, and that nation which is most rich, is most wicked.

There is no short cut to achievement. Life requires thorough preparation - veneer isn't worth anything.

In New York, there are so many potholes, they're like craters on the moon. That's another traffic thing.

A scholar is a candle which the love and desire of all men will light.