Never in all their history have men been able truly to conceive of the world as one: a single sphere, a globe, having the qualities of a globe, a round earth in which all the directions eventually meet, in which there is no center because every point, or none, is center — an equal earth which all men occupy as equals. The airman’s earth, if free men make it, will be truly round: a globe in practice, not in theory.

As we got further and further away, it [the Earth] diminished in size. Finally it shrank to the size of a marble, the most beautiful you can imagine. That beautiful, warm, living object looked so fragile, so delicate, that if you touched it with a finger it would crumble and fall apart. Seeing this has to change a man.

As I stand out here in the wonders of the unknown at Hadley, I sort of realize there’s a fundamental truth to our nature, Man must explore . . . and this is exploration at its greatest.

NASA is not about the ‘Adventure of Human Space Exploration’…We won’t be doing it just to get out there in space – we’ll be doing it because the things we learn out there will be making life better for a lot of people who won’t be able to go.

The regret on our side is, they used to say years ago, we are reading about you in science class. Now they say, we are reading about you in history class.

We want to explore. We’re curious people. Look back over history, people have put their lives at stake to go out and explore … We believe in what we’re doing. Now it’s time to go.

The regret on our side is, they used to say years ago, we are reading about you in science class. Now they say, we are reading about you in history class.

What was most significant about the lunar voyage was not that man set foot on the Moon but that they set eye on the earth.