The [Moon] surface is fine and powdery. I can kick it up loosely with my toe. It does adhere in fine layers like powdered charcoal to the sole and sides of my boots. I only go in a small fraction of an inch, maybe an eighth of an inch, but I can see the footprints of my boots and the treads in the fine sandy particles.

I put up my thumb and it blotted out the planet Earth.

We had hundreds of thousands of people all dedicated to doing the perfect job, and I think they did about as well as anyone could ever have expected.

I have been in relatively high-risk businesses all of my adult life. Few of the others, however, had the possibility of direct gains in knowledge which this one had. I have confidence in the equipment, the planning, the training. I suspect that on a risk-gain ratio, this project would compare very, very favorably with those to which I've been accustomed on the past 20 years.

It's different, but it's very pretty out here. I suppose they are going to make a big deal of all this.

Yeah, I wasn't chosen to be first. I was just chosen to command that flight. Circumstance put me in that particular role. That wasn't planned by anyone.

History will remember the twentieth century for two technological developments: atomic energy and space flight.