Nobody ever asks who was the seventh person on the Moon. The only thing they know is who's number one and who's number two. Does anybody know who the last man was?

I think the American Dream used to be achieving one's goals in your field of choice-and from that all other things would follow. Now, I think the dream has morphed into the pursuit of money: Accumulate enough of it, and the rest will follow. We've become more materialistic. For balance, I think we need to get back to idealism and patriotism, but also be realistic with our monetary goals.

When the time comes to start building deep space transports and refueling rocket tankers, it will be the commercial industry that steps up, not another government-owned, government-managed enterprise.

To appropriately respond to an emergency requires a very clear mind, to cooly analyze what the observations are and how to fix it.

Human rights problems will always exist for years to come, but maybe they'll lessen somewhat.

The final frontier may be human relationships, one person to another.

I have no doubt that humans will go to Mars. And I feel that America has led so many things in space - we have invested so much, and we have a lot to gain - that America could and should be the nation that should lead the settlement of Mars.