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Assorted Quotations

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This page features a collection of interesting and relevant quotations by authors and scholars on topics ranging from the Enlightenment, Copernican Revolution, NASA, Science, and Philosophy.

NASA

  “ As for walking on the moon, sometimes I wonder if that really happened. I can honestly say—and it's a great surprise to me that I have never had a dream about being on the moon. It's a great disappointment to me. ”
                  —Neil Armstrong (Wagener, One Giant Leap, p. 303).

  “ Today we have with us a group of students, among America's best. To you we say we have only completed a beginning. We leave you much that is undone. There are great ideas undiscovered, breakthroughs available to those who can remove one of the truth's protective layers. There are places to go beyond belief... ”
                  —Neil Armstrong, Speech on 25th anniversary of Apollo landing, JULY 20, 1994 - (Source)

  “ A beautiful story. But let’s not fool ourselves into thinking we went to the Moon because we’re pioneers or explorers or selfless discovers. We went to the Moon because Cold War politics made it the militarily expedient thing to do. ”
                  —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space chronicles: facing the ultimate frontier (2012), p.200

  “ Notwithstanding the sanitized memories so many of us have of the Apollo era, Americans were not first on the Moon because we're explorers by nature or because our country is committed to the pursuit of knowledge. We get to the Moon first because the United States was out to beat the Soviet Union, to win the Cold War any way we could. Kennedy made that clear when he complained to top NASA officials in November 1962:

I’m not that interested in space. I think it’s good, I think we ought to know about it, we’re ready to spend reasonable amounts of money. But we’re talking about these fantastic expenditures which wreck our budget and all these other domestic programs and the only justification for it in my opinion to do it in this time or fashion is because we hope to beat [the Soviet Union] and demonstrate that starting behind, as we did by a couple of years, by God, we passed them.

Like it or not, war (cold or hot) is the most powerful funding driver in the public arsenal. Lofty goals such as curiosity, discovery, exploration, and science can get you money for modest-size projects, provided they resonate with the political and cultural views of the moment. But big, expensive activities are inherently long term, and require sustained investment that must survive economic fluctuations and changes in the political winds.

In all eras, across time and culture, only war, greed, and the celebration of royal or religious power have fulfilled that funding requirement. Today, the power of kings is supplanted by elected governments, and the power of religion is often expressed in nonarchitectural undertakings, leaving war and greed to run the show. ”
                  —Neil deGrasse Tyson, Space chronicles: facing the ultimate frontier (2012), p.219

  “ In the late 1960's our simulation technology had progressed to the point where it became virtually impossible to separate the training from actual missions. The simulations became full dress rehearsals tor the missions down to the smallest detail. The simulation tested out the crew's and controller's responses to normal and emergency conditions. It checked out the exact flight plan, mission rules, and procedures that the crew and controllers would use for a later flight. ”
                  —Apollo Flight Director Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option

  “ The simulations were so real that no controller could discern the difference between the training and the real mission. ”
                  —Apollo Flight Director Gene Kranz, Failure Is Not an Option

  “ So when George “Jay” Keyworth, a forty-three-year-old weapons designer from Los Alamos, became Ronald Reagan’s science adviser, NASA faced a crisis of survival. He did not trust the space agency. “Of all the organizations that I have dealt with, some so wrapped up in their bureaucratic interests that they were certainly counter to the directions . . . the country was going in. Some of them filled with incompetent people. Some of them outstanding. I have only seen one that lied. It was NASA. From the top to the bottom they lie. . . . The reason they lie, of course, is because they are wrapped up in a higher calling. In their eyes they are white lies. They tell lies in order to do what has to be done. Because in the end the result will be for the betterment of the public. So they are not lying from evil. But, nevertheless, they are lying,” Keyworth asserts.13 He believed that the entire basis of the shuttle was a lie. ”
                  —Joseph J. Trento, Prescription for disaster, p.184

  “ All government agencies lie part of the time, but NASA is the only one I've ever encountered that does so routinely. ”
                  —George A. Keyworth, Science Advisor to President Regan in testimony before Congress, March 14, 1985

  “ Of all the organizations that I have dealt with . . . I have only seen one that lied. It was NASA," science adviser Keyworth says today. "The reason they lie, of course, is because they are wrapped up in a higher calling. In their eyes these are white lies. They tell lies in order to do what has to be done. Because in the end the result will be for the betterment of the public. So they are not lying from evil. But, nevertheless, they are lying. ”
                  —George A. Keyworth, quoted by the LA Times, Jan 18 1987 (Source)

  “ As the team and the money began to grow, Webb got a message from Bernard A. Schriever, who was responsible for all Air Force ICBMS including the troubled Atlas. Then Seamans’ aide David Williamson recalls what happened. “There is a famous secret telegram dealing with all of it and it was sent to James Webb saying don’t make it [NASA’s Atlas tests] public, because if you fly a big public mission on my Atlas and my Atlas breaks, I won’t be able to lie to Congress and to the people of America about how far ahead of the Russians we are. That’s not what he said but that’s what he meant. What he said was that it will hurt national security because it will give the Soviets a feeling that our deterrent isn’t credible. Okay, well that’s a legitimate argument. In fact it [the Atlas] wasn’t credible and wasn’t going to be credible for about three years. What he was saying in a premature way, we [NASA] will tell everybody in the world that we’re not as good as we think. And that is one of the big differences between the old NASA and DOD [Department of Defense] throughout. We never thought to use secrecy for embarrassment reasons of that kind.” ”
                  —Joseph J. Trento, Prescription for disaster, p.40

  “ As NASA dazzled the American public by pulling off one spectacular event after another, another equally massive space program was taking place out of the public’s view. What is known as the “black” space program became equal to NASA in dollars and by the late 1970's surpassed the civil program in spending. David Williamson, who had the job of NASA and DOD liaison, estimates that more than half of space activity is secret. “You simply cannot write about it because they will put you in jail.” ”
                  —Joseph J. Trento, Prescription for disaster, p.122

Misc Quotes on Space Travel

  “ The science and technology did not exist in 1961 to make the moon shot at that time. And many scientists thought that it was impossible to create this technology by the end of the decade. But enough scientists existed who did not reject the idea as totally impossible, and they set to work to invent everything necessary to make it happen. And, of course, on July 20, 1969, the United States reached the moon and returned the Apollo crew safely home a few days later. An almost impossible stretch was accomplished. ”
                  —Robert M. Sheehan, Jr., Mission Impact: Breakthrough Strategies for Nonprofits

  “ When I was a child, I read the popular comic strip Buck Rogers. Rogers wore a funny-looking outfit and traveled around in space in a shiny rocket. I liked reading Buck Rogers because it was like magic—the world of make-believe for young people. But later, the U.S. actually did it: we landed men on the moon and we got them back to Earth. In the 1958 two Harvard scientists conclusively proved that space travel was impossible (because of the weight of the fuel). Today we take Space travel for granted.

These achievements were all perceived to be impossible, but they were accomplished. If these things were possible, what else is possible? ”
                  —Don Soderquist, The Wal-Mart Way: The Inside Story of the Success of the World's Largest Company

  “ Unlike the problem of hunger, in which solutions already exist, there were no solutions to the problem of getting a man to the moon in 1961. President Kennedy created a context called "A man on the moon in 10 years," and out of that context, in which the question of feasibility was merely one of many positions within the context, came the workable solution: the Congressional approval, appropriations of money, technological breakthroughs, NASA, and, ultimately, men on the moon. Before then, space travel was not possible because the attempts to make it real existed in a condition of unworkability. ”
                  —Werner Erhard, 1977, The Hunger Project Source Document

  “ To place a man in a multi-stage rocket and project him into the controlling gravitational field of the moon where the passengers can make scientific observations, perhaps land alive, and then return to earth - all that constitutes a wild dream worthy of Jules Verne. I am bold enough to say that such a man-made voyage will never occur regardless of all future advances. ”
                  —Electrionics and Radio Pioneer Lee De Forest, Ph.D., Yale University, 1957

  “ We did not ask ourselves whether space exploration was possible. We simply assumed that it was, and that it could brought about in our time ”
                  —-Astronautics & Aeronautics - Volume 19 - Page 37, 1981

  “ My great grandma went from covered wagons to moon landings. It's cool to see how far we go. ”
                  —Anonymous

  “ In 1963, when most scientists doubted the possibility of interstellar space travel, Carl Sagan embraced the notion enthusiastically. He advocated direct physical contact among galactic communities by means of relativistic interstellar f‌light. ”
                  —George Basalla, Civilized Life in the Universe

  “ The rocket engineers and promoters were often science-fiction fans and writers themselves. Tsiolkovsky, Oberth and Von Braun all wrote space fiction at one time or another. Oberth and the VfR were technical advisers for Fritz Lang's movie Frau im Mond, receiving enough money to build an actual rocket they intended to launch in connection with the film's premiere. The plan went awry, but at least one prominent rocket engineer, Krafft Ehricke, designer of the Atlas booster which sent the first Americans into orbit, was "converted to space travel" by the movie.11 G. Edwards Pendray and Nathan Schachner, both presidents of the American Rocket Society, wrote for science-fiction magazines under pseudonyms, as did Ley himself. Arthur Clarke was an officer of the British Interplanetary Society before he became a successful science-fiction writer. Among a long string of technical articles predating his debut as a professional fiction writer was Clarke's proposal for a communications satellite, written in October, 1945.12 ”
                  —Science Fiction Studies, Volume 5, Part 2, July 1978 (Source)

  “ If respectable science could not open the road to the stars, there was only one alternative, "to go to the crackpots." ”
                  —Science Fiction Studies, Volume 5, Part 2, July 1978 (Source)

  “ Poll: Over Half of Russians Don't Believe America Landed on the Moon - NASA's six manned lunar missions, known as the Apollo program, which was conducted from July 1969 to December 1972, have attracted a great deal of interest among conspiracy theorists who hold that the entire program was a hoax aimed at pulling one over on the Soviets during the Cold War.

Some 57 percent of Russians believe that there has never been a manned lunar landing and are convinced that the US government falsified videos, photos and other material evidence regarding the 1969 expedition, a new poll by the Russian Public Opinion Research Center (Russian acronym VCIOM) has revealed. ”
                  —Sputnik News, July 27, 2018 (Archive)

  “ Why do 76% of Russians refuse to believe that the Americans were on the Moon? ”
                  —Russia Beyond, Jan 14, 2019 (Source)

Deception

  “ History is created, manipulated and written by those who are predominantly on the Victorious side of the nation which has supreme political, and especially military, dominance. Any ‘truth’ which has the slightest potential of weakening their total hold over the masses is not tolerated. Any truth which can impact their power is squelched or cunningly hidden by them, usually in a manufactured media release to the unsuspecting public, often in a jovial manner to render the information a laughing matter and display it as harmless. ”
                  —Former Apollo engineer, Clark C McClelland

  “ History is a lie, commonly agreed upon. ”
                  —Voltaire, French philosopher

  “ Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen. ”
                  —Friedrich Nietzsche

  “ Only the small secrets need to be protected. The big ones are kept secret by public incredulity. ”
                  —Marshall McLuhan (1911-1980), Canadian philosopher of communication theory

Science

  “ "I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea-shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me."

"Plato is my friend - Aristotle is my friend - but my greatest friend is truth...Truth is ever to be found in simplicity, and not in the multiplicity and confusion of things." ”
                  —Isaac Newton

  “ Today's scientists have substituded mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality. ”
                  —Nikola Tesla

  “ When I began my physical studies [in Munich in 1874] and sought advice from my venerable teacher Philipp von Jolly...he portrayed to me physics as a highly developed, almost fully matured science...Possibly in one or another nook there would perhaps be a dust particle or a small bubble to be examined and classified, but the system as a whole stood there fairly secured, and theoretical physics approached visibly that degree of perfection which, for example, geometry has had already for centuries. ”
                  —Max Plank

  “ Nobody that I know of in my field uses the so-called scientific method. In our field it is by the seat of your pants, leaps of logic. It is guesswork. ”
                  —Michio Kaku

(Source)

  “ It has astounded the world of mathematics, and physics and now you can't move in the physics world without bumping into somebody who wants to talk about the tenth dimension, the eleventh dimension, the multi-verse, hyper space, time travel. All the things that were once considered science fiction are now centerpiece in our understanding of the nature of everything. ”
                  —Michio Kaku

  “ Experiment is the only means of knowledge at our disposal. Everything else is poetry imagination. ”
                  —Max Planck, Nobel Prize, Physics

  “ Blind belief in authority is the greatest enemy of truth. ”
                  —Albert Einstein

  “ Advances are made by answering questions. Discoveries are made by questioning answers. ”
                  —Bernard Haisch, astrophysicist (c. 2000)

  “ We are trying to prove ourselves wrong as quickly as possible, because only in that way can we find progress. ”
                  —Richard Feynman

  “ When presented with two possibilities, scientists tend to choose the wrong one. ”
                  —Astrophysicist Halton C. Arp, Ph.D.

  “ ...the scientist, reverenced for their beards and the fur on their gowns, who teach that they alone are wise while the rest of mortal men flit about as shadows. How pleasantly they dote, indeed, while they construct their numberless worlds, and measure the sun, moon, stars, and spheres as with thumb and line. They assign causes for lightening, winds, eclipses, and other inexplicable things, never hesitating a whit, as if they were privy to the secrets of nature, artificer of things, or as if they visited us fresh from the council of the gods. Yet all the while nature is laughing grandly at them and their conjectures. For to prove that they have good intelligence of nothing, this is a sufficient argument: they can never explain why they disagree with each other on every subject. Thus knowing nothing in general, they profess to know all things in particular; though they are ignorant even of themselves, and on occasion do not see the ditch or the stone lying across their path, because many of them are blear-eyed or absent-minded; yet they proclaim that they perceive ideas, universals, forms without matter. ”
                  —The Praise of Folly by Erasmus (1511)

  “ A definition of science: Something that is direct, observable, physical, natural, repeatable, unambiguous and comprehensive – in other words not hearsay, popular opinion, “expert” testimony, majority view, personal conviction, organisational ruling, conventional usage, superficial analogy, appeal to “simplicity”, or other indirect means of persuasion. ”
                  —R.G. Elmendorf: The Foucault Pendulum, PA, USA, 1994.

  “ A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. ”
                  —Max Planck

  “ The motto of the Royal Society is “Nullius in verba,” which roughly means: “Take nobody’s word for it.” On the Royal Society’s website they expand this meaning thus:

“ [The motto]…is an expression of the determination of Fellows to withstand domination of authority and to verify all statements by an appeal to facts determined by experiment. ”

The quote reinforces the concept of not accepting as “self-evident” that which authorities (or equations) suggest would be found where we have not yet actually looked. ”
                  —Richard Benish, Correspondence with Professors

  “ Science today is locked into paradigms. Every avenue is blocked by beliefs that are wrong, and if you try to get anything published in a journal today, you will run up against a paradigm, and the editors will turn you down. ”
                  —Astronomer Fred Hoyle

  “ Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of science are written the words: 'Ye must have faith.' ”
                  —Max Planck

Enlightenment

  “ It matters not whether we reckon it 28 or 54 million miles distant for either would do just as well. ”
                  —Issac Newton