I think we're a long ways from really putting colonies of people out there who would live their whole lives out there in space. I don't see that happening for quite some time.

On K-12 education America has gone down, down, down compared to the other nations. It doesn't mean that we have gotten dumber. It just means that we have not advanced as fast in those areas as other nations have done, and we're way down right now.

I don't know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.

That was a real fireball.

If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their own self interest.

I think no matter where we go in space to me the important thing is not only getting there and getting back, but it's also doing research, because that opens up as a possibility with that new distance of travel in space.

That whole day [ of the space flight] is very vividly impressed on my memory because it was such a new experience. We hadn't done that before. And then I've recalled it so often since then I think that it's a - it's remained very vivid over the past 50 years, seems to me like about a week or two instead of 50 years.