Top 17 Jim Lovell Quotes

We do not realize what we have on Earth until we leave it.

We didn’t slow down, unlike the others, when we got to the moon because we needed its gravity to get back, so we hold the altitude record. I never even thought about it. Records are only made to be broken.

I could put my thumb up to a window and completely hide the Earth. I thought, ‘Everything I’ve ever known is behind my thumb.’

From now on we live in a world where man has walked on the Moon. It’s not a miracle; we just decided to go.

I was born a year after Lindbergh made his historic trip across the Atlantic.

If you’re going to go into space, you have to have an objective, a mission. Where do you want to go? Earth orbit? The moon? Mars? What’s the technology to get there? You develop the technology for the mission.

There are people who make things happen, there are people who watch things happen, and there are people who wonder what happened. To be successful, you need to be a person who makes things happen.

The moon is essentially gray, no color; looks like plaster of Paris or sort of a grayish beach sand.

I was only a hero by default. The flights were few and far between. There weren’t that many astronauts. The moon flights were so interesting and exciting.

The fascination to go into space has existed for hundreds of years. But as we do things and they’re successful, people get bored.

I was a naval officer and aviator. I tested airplanes and got selected to be an astronaut later on.

Boys like either dinosaurs or airplanes. I was very much an airplane boy.

Mars is a long ways away. The moon is only 240,000 miles, but Mars is in the millions. It’s too risky without spending more time going to the moon.

People say, ‘Did you violate Heaven?’ Well, God is down here, too. If you believe in God, you believe in God here as well as 240,000 miles away.

In space-flight terms, six landings on the moon back in the Sixties and Seventies doesn’t mean much.

After six successful Apollo flights, including two lunar landings, people were getting bored.

I would suspect strongly that over a period of time, if we put our mind to going to Mars, it will be a consortium of several countries.