Space exploration is something that we humans have been interested in for centuries. With that in mind, it shouldn’t be a surprise that some of the most inspiring scientific and space quotes come from a man who is the oldest to ever visit space, John Glenn. Throughout this article, we will be going over the quotes of an American hero who changed history and how we think about what is above us.
Inspirational Quotes by John Glenn
“If there is one thing I’ve learned in my years on this planet, it’s that the happiest and most fulfilled people I’ve known are those who devoted themselves to something bigger and more profound than merely their self-interest…”
“We are more fulfilled when we are involved in something bigger than ourselves.”
“Love is a combination of friendship, passion, and respect.”
“As I hurtled through space, one thought kept crossing my mind – every part of this rocket was supplied by the lowest bidder.”
“I don’t know what you could say about a day in which you have seen four beautiful sunsets.”
“An end of something means the beginning of something else, and I don’t think that something else is going to be the death of the manned space program.”
“To look out at this kind of creation out here and not believe in God is, to me, impossible.”
“I’m not interested in my legacy. I made up a word: ‘live-acy.’ I’m more interested in living.”
“If a man faces up to the unknown and takes the dare of the future, he can have some control over his destiny.”
“You fear the least what you know the most about.”
Astronaut walking on the moon with American flag.” class=”wp-image-87798″/>Life, Military, and Space-Related Quotes by John Glenn
“There is still no cure for the common birthday.”
“You should run your life, not by the calendar but by how you feel, and what you’re interests are, and your ambitions.”
“This is a day we have managed to avoid for a quarter of a century.”
“I didn’t see Saddam Hussein as being quite the danger that some other people did.”
“I pray every day and think everybody should.”
“It has been my observation that the happiest of people, the vibrant doers of the world, are almost always those who are using – who are putting into play, calling upon, depending upon – the greatest number of their God-given talents and capabilities.”
“The space station is the most unique laboratory we’ve ever built. The reason we have it is to research materials, people, medical matters, pharmaceuticals – the possibilities are nearly endless.”
“The political graveyards are full of people who don’t respond.”
“I liked flying, when I got into it, loved it. And I found I was very good at it. I’m not modest about the fact that I was a good pilot.”
“Old folks have dreams and ambitions too, like everybody else. Don’t sit on a couch someplace.”
“If you go to the Air and Space Museum in Washington, you can see the burn patterns on Friendship 7.”
“The best space movie in my view is ‘Apollo 13.’ That’s just the way it happened.”
“You can always say that it was scarce dollars when Lewis and Clark wanted to go to the West Coast and explore the West. And people complained about it, I understand, from a reading of the history books.”
“Quite often, while I’m getting up in the morning, I think my warranty is running out on these body parts because it’s not working quite the way it used to.”
“Probably, had World War II not come along and intervened, I would have tried to be a doctor. My son’s a doctor, and I still take some medical journals to this day.”
“In orbit, you’re keyed up and aware of everything going on, every little noise, anything that may have special meaning because of where you are.”
“When the new becomes commonplace, people become accustomed to it. That’s a tribute to our sense of adventure.”
“I can’t say I’ve ever had a space dream or that I ponder it all the time.”
“We had 83 different space research projects on my last space flight in ’98, and they covered the whole gamut.”
“It’s something to see a satellite being launched from another satellite.”
“As far as trying to analyze all the attention I received, I will leave that to others.”
“Any administration foolish enough to call ketchup a vegetable cannot be expected to cut the mustard.”
“I wouldn’t oppose a women’s astronaut training program; I just see no requirement for it.”
“The conquest of space is not merely a technological project of interest to a handful of select scientists and specialists, valuable though that research and information may be.”
“I have no political affiliations and have always and do now consider myself independent.”
“If people like Edison had waited to make every – or Ben Franklin or some of those people had waited to solve every problem on Earth before they did their research or before they were curious about doing something new, we’d never have made a lot of the progress we have.”
“I think even in bad times it’s good to keep some money going into research. And that’s the purpose of the whole space program. It’s not just exploration and going to see how far we can go out into space and keep people alive and bring them back, although exploration certainly has its place.”
Who Is the Author of Listed Quotes?
After piloting in World War II and the Korean War, John Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth in 1962 as a member of NASA’s first-class astronaut Mercury 7.
He traveled on the Space Shuttle Discovery at the age of 77 in 1998, becoming the oldest person to ever go to space. During these great successes, he wasn’t too far from political activity. But this stage in his career was a little more profound. From 1974 to 1999, he was a US Senator representing his home state of Ohio. John Glenn died in 2016 at the age of 95, leaving a great legacy.
Wrap Up
There is no doubt that John Glenn is a man who will be remembered for centuries to come, not only because he is one of NASA’s pioneers but also for the extraordinary life that he lived and the quotes that he left to inspire younger generations.