Some of the most exciting space education in the country is not coming out of Washington or New York or California or even Texas. It's coming from a place in Kansas called the Cosmosphere.

Prepare for the unknown, unexpected and inconceivable . . . after 50 years of flying I'm still learning every time I fly.

Curiosity is the essence of human existence.

After Apollo 17, America stopped looking towards the next horizon. The United States had become a space-faring nation, but threw it away. We have sacrificed space exploration for space exploitation, which is interesting but scarcely visionary.

As I take man's last step from the surface, back home for some time to come...I'd like to just (say) what I believe history will record. That America's challenge of today has forged man's destiny of tomorrow. As we leave the Moon at Taurus- Littrow, we leave as we came and, God willing, as we shall return, with peace and hope for all mankind. "Godspeed the crew of Apollo 17."

To become an astronaut, someone has to have a dream of his own to do something that he or she has always wanted to do, then commit himself to making that dream come true.

When you head on out to the Moon, in very short order, and you get a chance to look back at the Earth, that horizon slowly curves around in upon himself, and all of sudden you're looking at something that is very strange, but yet is very, very familiar, because you're beginning to see the Earth evolve.