Quips & Quotes II

"Okay, so what's the speed of dark?" ~ Comedian Steven Wright

"In spite of the opinions of certain narrow-minded people who would shut up the human race upon this globe, we shall one day travel to the moon, the planets, and the stars, with the same facility, rapidity, and certainty as we now make the voyage from Liverpool to New York." ~ Author Jules Verne (1865)

"It was breathtakingly beautiful, like something out of a fairy tale. There is no way to describe the joy of seeing the Earth. It is more beautiful than any other planet." ~ Valentina Tereshkova (1963)

First Man and Woman in space,
Yuri Gagarin and Valentina Tereshkova
(back row: Gherman Titov and Andriyan Nikolayev)

"The path of a cosmonaut is not an easy, triumphant march to glory. You have to get to know the meaning not just of joy but also of grief, before being allowed in the spacecraft cabin." ~ Yuri Gagarin (1961)

"The scientific theory I like best is that the rings of Saturn are composed entirely of lost airline luggage." ~ Mark Russell

"We risk great peril if we kill off this spirit of adventure, for we cannot predict how and in what seemingly unrelated fields it will manifest itself. A nation that loses its forward thrust is in danger. The sense of exploration is intimately bound with human resolve, and for a nation to believe that it is still committed to a forward motion is to ensure its continuance." ~ Author James A. Michener (1979)


"To go places and do things that have never been done before – that's what living is all about." ~ Astronaut Michael Collins (Apollo 11)

"The dinosaurs became extinct because they didn't have a space program." ~ Author Larry Niven

"There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.There is another theory which states that this has already happened." ~ Author Douglas Adams