There is just no way that I can understand in God's green earth that an airline could undertake with its normal procedures the operation of the Space Shuttle. . . . You don't put parachutes on airliners because the margin of safety is built into the machine. The 727 airplanes we fly are proven vehicles with levels of safety and redundancy built in. The shuttle is a hand-made piece of experimental gear.

It's a vast, lonely, forbidding expanse of nothing rather like clouds and clouds of pumice stone. And it certainly does not appear to be a very inviting place to live or work.

We have to earn our Wings every day.

[The Moon] was a sobering sight, but it didn't have the impact on me, at least, as the view of the Earth did.

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me -- a small disk, 240,000 miles away. . . . Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence, don't show from that distance.

I think the one overwhelming emotion that we had was when we saw the Earth rising in the distance over the lunar landscape - it makes us realize that we all do exist on one small globe. For from 230,000 miles away, it really is a small planet.

A superior pilot uses his superior judgment to avoid situations which require the use of his superior skill.