Spaceflights cannot be stopped. This is not the work of any one man or even a group of men. It is a historical process which mankind is carrying out in accordance with the natural laws of human development. The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin.
Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before. Where ignorance lurks, so too do the frontiers of discovery and imagination.
Across the sea of space, the stars are other suns.
It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small. The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow.
Science cuts two ways, of course; its products can be used for both good and evil. But there’s no turning back from science. The early warnings about technological dangers also come from science. Buy why, some say, the moon? Why choose this as our goal? And they may as well ask why climb the highest mountain? The dreams of yesterday are the hopes of today and the reality of tomorrow. The sky is the limit only for those who aren’t afraid to fly! Astronomy compels the soul to look upward, and leads us from this world to another. Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up. Problems look mighty small from 150 miles up. To be the first to enter the cosmos, to engage, single-handed, in an unprecedented duel with nature—could one dream of anything more? That’s one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind.
We have an infinite amount to learn both from nature and from each other. 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.