The space shuttle has been a fantastic vehicle. It is unlike any other thing that we've ever built. Its capabilities have carried several hundred people into space.

Looking down at the Earth, you started to pick up a sense of speed much more than I had noticed on orbit.

We were only on orbit a little over two days so we had no adverse effects from being weightless...

You're going very fast when you're on orbit, going around the world once every hour and a half.

We were on the dark side of the Earth when we started to see outside the window this soft pink glow, which is a lot of little angry ions out there going very fast. We were hitting them very fast.

I was selected to be an astronaut on a military program called the Manned Orbiting Laboratory back in '67 and that program got cancelled in '69 and NASA ended up taking half of us...

The nature of the shuttle was, we couldn't put a crew escape system in it.

Having the opportunity to fly the first flight of something like a space shuttle was the ultimate test flight.

Living inside the shuttle was a little like camping out. We ended up sleeping in our seats. You had to pay attention to housekeeping, not get things too dirty.

The real pleasure was having the chance to enjoy being weightless, and the other was to... spend some time looking out at this beautiful spaceship Earth that we're all lucky to inhabit.

When you work really hard for something for a long time it's almost impossible to believe that it's coming true.

Hold onto your creativity, that idealism that is rooted in some degree of innocence and a firm belief in something finer than the things we already have.

There is no one or a group that would ever be able to achieve or accomplish anything unique except that they are angry with their situation.

We can't constantly explain to our voters that taxpayers have to be on the hook for certain risks, rather than those who make a lot of money taking those risks.

We've all made bad decisions, but they haven't always been resulting in the deaths of innocent people.

Trying to be like my uncle, because I was an only child. He and my cousins were everything to me.

I'm so lucky that I have a great relationship.

I don't believe in empirical science. I only believe in a priori truth.

The fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

Life is given to us, we earn it by giving it.

I think there will be 20 years of evolution from linear broadcast to internet television.