Alan Shepard Quotes

I realized up there that our planet is not infinite. It's fragile. That may not be obvious to a lot of folks, and it's tough that people are fighting each other here on Earth instead of trying to get together and live on this planet. We look pretty vulnerable in the darkness of space.

When I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon I cried

It's a very sobering feeling to be up in space and realize that one's safety factor was determined by the lowest bidder on a government contract.

Why don't you fix your little problem and light this candle?

If somebody'd said before the flight, 'Are you going to get carried away looking at the Earth from the Moon?' I would have say, 'No, no way.' But yet when I first looked back at the Earth, standing on the Moon, I cried.

You may not have any extra talent, but maybe you are just paying more attention to what you are doing.

The fact that every part of this ship was built by the low bidder.

I just wanted to be the first one to fly for America, not because I'd end up in the pages of history books.

I can hit it farther on the moon. But actually, my swing is better here on Earth.

I must admit, maybe I am a piece of history after all.

Whether you are an astronomer or a life scientist, geophysicist, or a pilot, you've got to be there because you believe you are good in your field, and you can contribute, not because you are going to get a lot of fame or whatever when you get back.

Roger, liftoff, and the clock is started.

You've done it in the simulator so many times, you don't have a real sense of being excited when the flight is going on. You're excited before, but as soon as the liftoff occurs, you are busy doing what you have to do.

Al is on the surface. And it's been a long way, but we're here.

Obviously I was challenged by becoming a Naval aviator, by landing aboard aircraft carriers and so on.

You know, being a test pilot isn't always the healthiest business in the world.

I'd like to say I was smart enough to finish six grades in five years, but I think perhaps the teacher was just glad to get rid of me.

Why don't you light that candle ?

And I think that still is true of this business - which is basically research and development - that you probably spend more time in planning and training and designing for things to go wrong, and how you cope with them, than you do for things to go right.

I guess those of us who have been with NASA kind of understand the tremendous excitement and thrills and celebrations and national pride that went with the Apollo program is just something you're not going to create again, probably until we go to Mars.

Got more dirt than ball. Here we go again.

We're going to see passengers in space stations in 15 years, who will be able to buy a ticket and spend a weekend in space.

I think about the personal accomplishment, but there's more of a sense of the grand achievement by all the people who could put this man on the moon.

The pilot looked at his cues of attitude and speed and orientation and so on and responded as he would from the same cues in an airplane, but there was no way it flew the same. The simulators had showed us that.

I know you're all saying I can go to the moon but I can't find Pasadena.