Astronauts and space travelers - Quotes from Science Fiction

A lot of quotations carefully collected from a very big amount of books and divided by categories.

Have fun reading it, this is really interesting and breathtaking!

Thanks to the courage and devotion of three men, this project of sending a bullet to the moon, once seen as a futile enterprise, had already produced concrete results, with incalculable consequences. The voyagers, imprisoned in their new satellite, had not reached their destination, but at least they had become part of the lunar world; they were in orbit around the celebrity of the night, and, for the first time, the human eye could penetrate all her mysteries. The names of Nicholl, Barbicane, and Michel Ardan would be forever celebrated in the annals of astronomy, for these bold explorers, eager to widen the circle of human knowledge, had audaciously launched themselves into space, gambling their lives in the strangest undertaking of modern times.

- Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon (1865), translated by Walter James Miller (1978)

Thousands of men have spun a trail of daring adventure and pioneering in the spaceways. There are statues in virtually every park on the planet dedicated to their truly magnificent achievements. Statues of rugged men, with set chins and purposeful eyes. Pioneers who blasted open the greatest frontier of them all, so you cannot blame us if doggedly we persist in revering their magic names; to honor their memories.

- Sam Moskowitz, ''Man of the Stars'' (1941)

Spacemen die if they stay in one place.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''The Green Hills of Earth'' (1947)

Astronauts were not the impulsive daredevils so dear to the stereopticonloving public. They couldn't afford to be. The hazards of the profession required an infinite capacity for cautious, contemplative thought.

- Eric Frank Russell, ''Hobbyist'' (1947)

Spacemen - men who work in space, pilots and jetmen and astrogators and such - are men who like a few million miles of elbow room.

- Robert A. Heinlein, ''Gentlemen, Be Seated!'' (1948)

David will never go to space again. I'm glad.What did it gain the McQuarries? What has it ever gained men? Have men ever brought back more happiness from the stars? Will they ever?

- Leigh Brackett, ''TheWoman from Altair'' (1951)

You know what they say about bold spacemen never becoming old spacemen. They don't live that long.

- Poul Anderson, ''Garden in the Void'' (1952)

We'd sat cooped up in a prison-cell that flew, that was all - but now we were ''spacemen.''

- Edmond Hamilton, ''What's It Like Out There?'' (1952)

The Stone trembled and threw herself outward bound, toward Saturn. In her train followed hundreds and thousands and hundreds of thousands of thousands of restless, rolling Stones . . . to Saturn . . . to Uranus, to Pluto . . . rolling on out to the stars . . . outward bound to the ends of the Universe.

- Robert A. Heinlein, The Rolling Stones (1952)

Constantly working outward, putting system after system inside the known universe, they were the bright hungry wave of mankind reaching out to gather in the stars.

- Algis Budrys, ''Lower Than Angels'' (1956)

We're free out here, really free for the first time. We're floating, literally. Gravity can't bow our backs or break our arches or tame our ideas. You know, it's only out here that stupid people like us can really think. The weightlessness gets our thoughts and we can sort them. Ideas grow out here like nowhere else - it's the right environment for them. Anyone can get into space, if he wants to hard enough. The ticket is a dream.

- Fritz Leiber, ''The Beat Cluster'' (1961)

''You spin in the sky, the world spins under you, and you step from land to land, while we . . .'' She turned her head right, left, and her black hair curled and uncurled on the shoulder of her coat. ''We have our dull, circled lives, bound in gravity, worshiping you!''

- Samuel R. Delany, ''Aye, and Gomorrah'' (1967)

If space people didn't have curiosity, they probably wouldn't be space people.

- Stephen Tall, ''The Bear with the Knot on His Tail'' (1971)

Up here [in space], you're free. Really free, for the first time in your life. All the laws and rules and prejudices they've been dumping on you all your life . . . they're all down there. Up here it's a new start. You can be yourself and do your own thing . . . and nobody can tell you different.

- Ben Bova, ''Zero Gee'' (1972)

Once you've grown up in space, moving on means moving out, not going back to Earth. Nobody wants to be a groundpounder.

- Gregory Benford, ''Dark Sanctuary'' (1979)

''What was being on the moon literally like?'' [. . .] ''Being on the moon?'' His tired gaze inspected the narrow street of cheap jewellery stores, with its office messengers and lottery touts, the off-duty taxi-drivers leaning against their cars. ''It was just like being here.''

- J. G. Ballard, ''The ManWhoWalked on the Moon'' (1985)

Nonetheless, Scranton had travelled in space. He had known the loneliness of separation from all other human beings, he had gazed at the empty perspectives that I myself had seen.

- J. G. Ballard, ''The ManWhoWalked on the Moon'' (1985)

You're all astronauts on some kind of star trek.

- Brannon Braga and Ronald D. Moore, Star Trek: First Contact (film, 1996)