There are times when you devote yourself to a higher cause than personal safety.

To get your name well enough known that you can run for a public office, some people do it by being great lawyers or philanthropists or business people or work their way up the political ladder. I happened to become known from a different route.

As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind - every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.

I suppose the one quality in an astronaut more powerful than any other is curiosity. They have to get some place nobody's ever been.

I think a mentor gets a lot of satisfaction in a couple of ways. They're doing something constructive, so they feel good about that. And when they see the results of this, with the young people they're working with, it's very, very rewarding.

To sit back and let fate play its hand out and never influence it is not the way man was meant to operate.

When others kid me about being bald, I simply tell them that the way I figure it, the good Lord only gave men so many hormones, and if others want to waste theirs on growing hair, that's up to them.